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JacUson Square, New Orleans, formerly the Place d'Armes. 






The Creoles 



OF 



Louisiana 



George W. Cable 

Author of " Old Creole Days," " The Grau<iissimes," "Madame DelJ>hine; 
" Dr. Sevier," etc. 







NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



1^ vy. 






CoPVRUiHT, 1884, BV 

CHARLES SCKIl'.NER'S SONS 




TROWS 

niNTmS AND eOOKBINDING COMPANY, 

NEW YORK. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. — Who are the Creoles? 1 

II. — French Founders, 9 

III. — The Creoles' City, ...... 17 

IV. — African Slaves and Indian Wars, . . .28 

V. — The New Generation, 37 

VI. — The First Creoles, 41 

Vll. — Praying to the King, 53 

VIII. — Ulloa, Aubky, and the Superior Council, . . 57 

IX. — The Insurrection, G4 

X. — The Price of Half-convictions, . . . .68 
XI.— Count O'Reilly and Spanish Laws, . . .72 

XII.— Spanish Conciliation, 80 

XIII. — The American Revolution on the Gulf Side, . 85 
XIV. — Spanish New Orleans, . . . . . .94 

XV. — How Bore made Sugar, 108 

XVI. — The Creoles Sing the Marseillaise, . . .114 
XVII.— The Americans, 118 



VI 



CONTENTS. 



XVIII. — Spain aoainst Fati:, .... 
XIX.— New Okleans Souoiit— Louisiana Bought, 
XX.— New Orleans in 1.S(»;5, . 
XXI.— Fkom Subjects to Citizens, . 
XXII. — Buhk's CoNsriK.vcv, . 
XXIII. — The West Inpian Cousin, 

XXIV. — TlIH PlUATKS OK BaKATAUIA, . 

XXV. — Bau.vtahia Dkstkoyei), . 
XXVI.— The Buitisii Invasion, . 
XXVII.— The Battle of New Oule.vns, 
XXVIII. — The End of the Pikatks, 
XXIX. — F.\UBOUUG Ste. Maiue, . 
XXX. — A IIuNDUED Thousand People, 
XXXI.— Flush Timks, .... 
XXXIl. — Why not Biocer than London, 
XXXIII.— The School-master, 
XXXIV.— Later Days, .... 
XXXV.— Inundations, .... 
XXXVI. — Sauve's Crevasse, . 
XXXVII.— The Days of Pestilence, 
XXXVIIL— The Gre.\t Epidemic, . 
XXXIX. — Brighter Skies, 



PAGE 

i:W 

\m 

141 
147 
10(5 
101 
172 
185 
189 
203 
210 
217 
227 
240 
2r,(J 
261 
266 
276 
284 
291 
303 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 

Jackson Square, New Orleans, formerly the Place 

d'Armes, Frontispiece 

Map of Louisiana, Facing p. 1 

Bienville, 11 

Plan op City, showing Buildings, 15 

Old Ursuline Convent, 21 

In the New Convent Garden, 24 

Old Villa on Bayou St. John, ...... 43 

Old Canal formerly in Dauphine Street, . . . .47 

"Cruel O'Reilly." (From a miniature in possession of Hon. 

Charles Gayarre, of Louisiana.), 75 

Old Cabildo as built by Almonaster, 1794, and corner of 

THE Plaza, ' . , .97 

"Gratings, balconies, and lime-washed stucco," . . 101 

The "Old Basin," 105 

Etienne de Bore, Ill 

In the Cabildo, 114 

A Royal Street Corner, 117 



Vlll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAOB 

TiiK Mahiony House, where Loris Philippe stopped in 

1798, 127 

Autographs fhom the Aiuiiives, i;j4 

TUANSOM IN THE PoNTALHA lillLUINdS, JaCKSON St^UAUE, . 140 

Wii.i.iAM CiiAiiLEs Cole Claiboune, Goveunok of Loiisi- 

ANA KUOM 1803 TO 1816, 143 

Rev. Father Antonio de Seoeli.a (Pkue Antoine), . . 145 

In Rue du Maine, 159 

Bakatarian Luggers at the Fruit LANoiNti, . . 182 

Jackson's Headquarters, 195 

Packenuam's Headquarters (from the rear), . . 197 

The Battle-Ground, 201 

Old Spanish Cottage in Royal Street, Scene of Andrew 

Jackson's Trial, 204 

Tomb of Governor Claiborne's Family, .... 208 
Old Bourse and St. Louis Hotel. (Afterward the St.\te 
House.), 221 

The Picayune Tier, , 226 

A Cotton Press and Yard, 229 

Entrance to a Cotton Yard, 233 

The Old Bank in Toulouse Street, 237 

Among the Markets, 243 

Exchange Alley. (Old Passage de la Bourse.) Looking 
toward the American Quarter, 247 

Old Passage de la Bourse. Looking toward the French 
Quarter, 250 



LIST or ILLUSTRATIONS. ix 



PAGE 



Behikd the Old Fuench Market, 353 

A Crevasse. (Story's Plantation, 1882.), .... 270 

In the Quadroon Quarter 274 

A Full Kiver. (Lower front corner of the Old Town.), . 277 
A Cemetery Walk. (Tombs and "Ovens."), .... 294 

The Old Calaboza, . . 309 

An Inner Court — Royal Street, 311 

Old Spanish Gateway and Stair in the Cabildo, . . 314 



THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 



I. 

WHO ARE THE CREOLES? 

/~\NE city in the United States is, without pretension 
^-"^ or intention, picturesque and antique. A quaint 
Southern-European aspect is encountered in the narrow 
streets of its early boundaries, on its old Place d'Armes, 
along its balconied fa9ade8, and about its cool, flowery 
inner courts. 

Among the great confederation of States whose Anglo- 
Saxon life and inspiration swallows up all alien immigra- 
tions, there is one in which a Latin civilization, sinewy, 
valiant, cultured, rich, and proud, holds out against extinc- 
tion. There is a people in the midst of the population of 
Louisiana, who send representatives and senators to the 
Federal Congress, and who vote for the nation's rulers. 
They celebrate the Fourth of July ; and ten days later, 
with far greater enthusiasm, they commemorate that great 




Vv.^.^tV.^^'a'a V\.X. 



9i Longitude 



MAP OF LOUISIANA, 

Showing, 1st, the country of the French-speaking populations, bounded on the east by the 
Mississippi, on tlie south by the Gulf of Mexico, and on tlie west and northeast by arbitrary 
right lines; and, 2d, the Bayou Tcche running southeasterly through this region, and divid- 
ing roughly between the prairies, occupied mainly by the Acadians, and the Swamp country 
adjacent to the Mississippi, the home of the Creoles. 



2 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

Fourtcentli that saw the fall of the Bastile, Other citi- 
zens of the United States, hut not themselves, they call 
Americans. 

AVIu) are they ? AVhcre do they live ? 

Take the map of Louisiana. Draw a line from the 
southwestern to the northeastern corner of the State ; let 
it turn thence down the Mississippi to the little river-side 
town of Baton Tlouge, the State's seat of government; 
there draw it eastward through lakes Maurepas, Pontchar- 
train, and Borgne, to the Gulf of Mexico; thence pass 
along the Gulf coast hack to the starting-point at the mouth 
of the Sahine, and you will have compassed rudely, but 
accurately enough, the State's eighteen thousand seven 
hundred and fifty square miles of delta lands. 

About half the State lies outside these bounds and is 
more or less hilly. Its population is mainly an Anglo- 
American moneyed and landed class, and the blacks and 
mulattoes who were once its slaves. The same is true of 
the population in that part of the delta lands north of 
Red River. The Creoles are not there. 

Across the southern end of the State, from Sabine 
Lake to Chandeleur Bay, with a north-and-south width of 
from ten to thirt}'^ miles and an average of about fifteen, 
stretch the Gulf marshes, the wild haunt of myriads of 
birds and water-fowl, serpents and saurians, hares, rac- 
coons, wild-cats, deep-bellowing frogs, and clouds of in- 
sects, and by a few hunters and oystermen, whose solitary 
and rarely frequented huts speck the wide, green horizon 



WHO AKE THE CREOLES ? 3 

at remote intervals. Neither is the home of the Creoles 
to be found here. 

North of these marshes and within the bounds already 
set lie still two other sorts of delta country. In these 
dwell most of the French-speaking people of Louisiana, 
both white and colored. Here the names of bayous, 
lakes, villages, and plantations are, for the most part, 
French ; the parishes (counties) are named after saints and 
church-feasts, and although for more than half a century 
there has been a strong inflow of Anglo-Americans and 
English-speaking blacks, the youth still receive their edu- 
cation principally from the priests and nuns of small 
colleges and convents, and two languages are current : in 
law and trade, English ; in the sanctuary and at home, 
French. 

These two sorts of delta country are divided by the 
Bayou Teche. West of this stream lies a beautiful ex- 
panse of faintly undulating prairie, some thirty-nine hun- 
dred square miles in extent, dotted with artificial home- 
stead groves, with fields of sugar-cane, cotton, and corn, 
and with herds of ponies and keen-horned cattle feeding 
on its short, nutritious turf. Their herdsmen speak an 
ancient French patois, and have the blue eyes and light 
brown hair of Northern France. 

But not yet have we found the Creoles. The Creoles 
smile, and sometimes even frown at these ; these are the 
children of those famed Nova Scotian exiles whose ban- 
ishment from their homes by British arms in 1755 has so 



4 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

often been celebrated in romance ; they still bear the name 
of Acatlians. They are found not only on this westei-n 
side of the Teche, but in all this French-speaking region 
of Louisiana, But these vast prairies of Attakapas and 
Opelousas are peculiarly theirs, and here tliey largely out- 
number that haughtier Louisianian who endeavors to 
withhold as well from him as from the " American " the 
proud appellation of Creole. 

Thus we have drawn in the lines upon a region lying 
between the mouth of Red River on the north and the 
(xulf marshes on the south, east of the Tcche and south of 
Lakes Borgne, Pontchartrain, and Maurepas, and the 
Bayou Manchac, However he may be found elsewhere, 
this is the home, the realm, of the Louisiana Creole. 

It is a region of incessant and curious paradoxes. The 
feature, elsewhere so nearly universal, of streams rising 
from elevated sources, growing by tributary inflow, and 
moving on to empty into larger water-courses, is entirely 
absent. The circuit of inland water supply, to which our 
observation is accustomed elsewhere — commencing with 
evaporation from I'emote watery expanses, and ending M'ith 
the junction of streams and their down-flow to the sea — 
is here in great part reversed ; it begins, instead, with the 
influx of streams into and over the land, and though it in- 
cludes the seaward movement in the channels of main 
streams, yet it yields up no small part of its volume by an 
enormous evaporation from millions of acres of overflowed 
swamp. It is not in the general rise of waters, but in 



WHO ARE THE CREOLES? 5 

their subsidence, that the smaller streams deliver their 
contents toward the sea. From Red River to the Gulf 
the early explorers of Louisiana found the Mississippi, 
on its western side, receiving no true ti'ibutary ; but 
instead, all streams, though tending toward the sea, yet 
doing so by a course directed away from some larger 
channel. Being the offspring of the larger streams, and 
either still issuing from them or being cut off from them 
only by the growth of sedimentary deposits, these smaller 
bodies were seen taking their course obliquely away from 
the greater, along the natural aqueducts raised slightly 
above the general level by the deposit of their own allu- 
vion. This deposit, therefore, formed the bed and banks 
of each stream, and spread outward and gently downward 
on each side of it, varying in width from a mile to a few 
yards, in proportion to the size of the stream and the dis- 
tance from its mouth. 

Such streams called for a new generic term, and these 
explorers, generally military engineers, named them bay- 
ous, or hoyaus : in fortification, a branch trench. The 
Lafourche (" the fork,") the Boeuf , and other bayous were 
manifestly mouths of the Red and the Mississippi, 
gradually grown longer and longer through thousands of 
years. From these the lesser bayous branched off con- 
fusedly hither and thither on their reversed watersheds, 
not tributaries, but, except in low water, tribute takers, 
bearing off the sediment-laden back waters of the swollen 
channels, broad-casting them in the intervening swamps, 



6 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

and, as tlie time of subsidence came on, leturnini; them, 
greatly diminished by evaporation, in dark, wood-stained, 
and shiggish, but clear streams. The whole system 
was one primarily of irrigation, and only secondarily of 
drainage. 

On the banks of this immense fretwork of natural dykes 
and sluices, though navigation is still slow, circuitous, and 
impeded with risks, now lie hundreds of miles of the 
richest plantations in America; and here it was that the 
French colonists, first on the Mississippi and later on the 
great bayous, laid the foundations of the State's agricul- 
tural wealth. 

The scenery of this land, where it is still in its wild 
state, is weird and funereal ; but on the banks of the large 
bayous, broad fields of corn, of cotton, of cane, and of rice, 
open out at frequent intervals on either side of the bayou, 
pushing back the dark, pall-like curtain of moss-draped 
swamp, and presenting to the passing eye the neat and 
often imposing residence of the planter, the white double 
row of field-hands' cabins, the tall red chimney and broad 
gray roof of the sugar-house, and beside it the huge, 
square, red brick bagasse-burner, into which, during the 
grinding season, the residuum of crushed sugar-cane passes 
unceasingly day and night, and is consumed with the 
smoke and glare of a conflagration. 

Even when the forests close in upon the banks of the 
stream there is a wild and solemn beauty in the shifting 
scene which appeals to the imagination with special 



WHO AKE THE CREOLES? 7 

strength when the cool morning lights or the warmer 
glows of evening impart the colors of the atmosphere to 
the surrounding wilderness, and to the glassy waters of 
the narrow and tortuous bayous that move among its 
shadows. In the last hour of day, those scenes are often 
illuminated with an extraordinary splendor. From llie 
boughs of the dark, broad-spreading live-oak, and the 
phantom-like arms of lofty cypresses, the long, motionless 
pendants of pale gray moss point down to their inverted 
images in the unruffled waters beneath them. Nothing 
breaks the wide-spread silence. The light of the declin- 
ing sun at one moment brightens the tops of the cy- 
presses, at another glows like a furnace behind their black 
branches, or, as the voyager reaches a western turn of the 
bayou, swings slowly round, and broadens down in dazz- 
ling crimsons and purples upon the mirror of the stream. 
Now and then, from out some hazy shadow, a heron, 
white or blue, takes silent flight, an alligator crossing the 
stream sends out long, tinted bars of widening ripple, or 
on some high, fire-blackened tree a flock of roosting vul- 
tures, silhouetted on the sk}', linger with half-opened, 
unwilling wing, and flap away by ones and twos until the 
tree is bare. Should the traveller descry, first as a 
mote intensely black in the midst of the brilliancy that 
overspreads the water, and by-and-by revealing itself 
in true outline and proportion as a small canoe con- 
taining two men, whose weight seems about to engulf 
it, and by whose paddle-strokes it is impelled with 



8 



THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 



such evenness and speed that a long, glassy wave gleams 
continually at either side a full inch higher than the edge 
of the Loat, he will have before him a picture of nature 
and human life that might have been seen at any time 
since the French fathers of the Louisiana Creoles colonized 
the Delta. 

Near the southeastern limit of this region is the spot 
where these ancestors first struck permanent root, and 
the growth of this peculiar and interesting civilization 
bearan. 




11. 

FRENCH FOUNDERS. 

T" ET us give a final glance at the map. It is the 
general belief that a line of elevated land, now some 
eighty or ninety miles due north of the Louisiana coast, 
is the prehistoric shore of the Gulf. A range of high, 
abrupt hills or bluffs, which the Mississippi first en- 
counters at the city of Yicksburg, and whose southwest- 
ward and then southward trend it follows thereafter 
to the town of Baton Rouge, swerves, just below this 
point, rapidly to a due east course, and declines gradually 
until, some thirty miles short of the eastern boundary of 
Louisiana, it sinks entirely down into a broad tract of 
green and flowery sea-marsh that skirts, for many leagues, 
the waters of Mississippi Sound. 

Close along imder these subsiding bluffs, where they 
stretch to the east, the Bayou Manchac, once Iberville 
River, and the lakes beyond it, before the bayou was 
artificially obstructed, united the waters of Mississippi 
River with those of Mississippi Sound. Apparently this 
line of water was once the river itself. Xow, however, 
the great flood, turning less abruptly, takes a southeasterly 
course, and, gliding tortuously, wide, yellow, and sunny, 



10 TIIK ("KEOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

between low sandy banks lined with endless brakes of 
Cottonwood and willow, cuts off between itself and its 
ancient channel a portion of its own delta formation. 
This fragment of half-made country, comprising some- 
thing over seventeen hundred square miles of river-shore, 
dark swamp-land, and bright marsh, was once widely 
known, both in commerce and in international politics, as 
Orleans Island. 

Its outline is extremely irregular. At one place it is 
fifty-seven miles across from the river shore to the eastern 
edge of the marshes. Near the lower end there is scarcely 
the range of a " musket-shot " between river and sea. At 
a point almost midway of the island's length the river 
and Lake Pontchartrain approach to within six miles of 
each other, and it was here that, in February, 1718, was 
founded the city of New Orleans. 

Strictly, the genesis of Louisiana dates nineteen years 
earlier. In 1691), while Spain and Great Britain, each 
for itself, were endeavoring to pre-empt the southern out- 
let of the Mississippi Valley, France had sent a small fleet 
from Brest for the same purpose, under command of the 
brave and adventurous Canadian, D'Iberville. This gal- 
lant sailor was the oldest living member in a remarkably 
brilliant group of brothers, the sons of M. Lemoyne de 
Bienville, a gentleman of Quebec, who had been able, as 
it appears, to add to the family name of Lemoyne the 
title of a distinct estate for six of his seven sons. 

With D'Iberville came several remoter kinsmen and at 



FRENCH FOdNDEKS. 



11 



least two of his brothers, Sanvolle and Bienville. The 
eldest of the seven was dead, and the name of his estate, 
Bienville, had fallen to the youngest, Jean Baptiste by 
name, a midshipman of but twenty-two, but destined to 




be the builder, as his older brother was the founder, of 
Louisiana, and to weave his name, a golden thread, in- 
to the history of the Creoles in the Mississippi delta. 

D'Iberville's arrival in the northern waters of the Gulf 
was none too soon for his purpose. He found the Span- 



12 THE CKEOLES OP LOUISIAISrA. 

iards just establishing tlicinselves at Pensacola with a tieet 
of too nearly his own's strength to be amiably crowded 
aside, and themselves too old in diplomacy to listen to his 
graceful disshnulations ; wherefore he sailed farther west 
and planted his colony upon some low, infertile, red, 
sandy bluffs covered with live-oaks and the towering 
yellow-pine, on the eastern shore of a beautiful, sheltered 
Avater, naming the bay after the small tribe of Indians 
that he found there, Biloxi. The young Bienville, sent on 
to explore the water-ways of the country westward, met a 
British officer ascending the Mississippi with two vessels 
in search of a spot fit for colonization, and by assertions 
more ingenious than candid induced him to withdraw, 
where a long bend of the river, shining in the distant 
plain, is still pointed out from the towers and steeples 
of New Orleans as the English Turn, 

The story of the nineteen years that followed may be 
told almost in a line. Sauvolle, left by D'Iberville in 
charge at Biloxi, died two years after and was succeeded by 
Bienville. The governorship of the province thus assumed 
by the young French Canadian sailor on the threshold of 
manhood he did not finally lay down until, an old Knight 
of St. Louis turning his sixty-fifth year, he had more than 
earned the title, fondly given him by the Creoles, of " the 
father of Louisiana." He was on one occasion still their 
advocate before the prime minister of France, when 
bowed by the weight of eighty- six winters, and still the 
object of a public affection that seems but his just due 



FRENCH FOUNDERS. 13 

when we contemplate in his portrait the broad, calm fore- 
head, the studious eye, observant, even searching, and yet 
quiet and pensive, the slender nostrils, the firm-set jaw, 
the lines of self -discipline, the strong, wide, steel-clad 
shoulders and the general air of kind sagacity and reserved 
candor, which it is easy to believe, from his history, were 
nature's, not the i)ainter's, gifts. 

It was he who projected and founded l^ew Orleans. 
The colony at Biloxi, and later at Mobile, was a feeble and 
ravenous infant griped and racked by two internal factions. 
One was bent on finding gold and silver, on pearl-fishing, 
a fur trade, and a commerce with South America, and, 
therefore, in favor of a sea-coast establishment ; the other 
advocated the importation of French agriculturists, and 
their settlement on the alluvial banks of the Mississippi. 
Bienville, always the foremost explorer and the wisest 
counsellor, from the beginning urged this wiser design. 
For years he was overruled under the commercial policy 
of the merchant monopolist, Anthony Crozat, to whom the 
French king had farmed the province. But when Crozat's 
large but unremunerative privileges fell into the hands of 
John Law, director-general of the renowned Mississippi 
Company, Bienville's counsel prevailed, and steps were 
taken for removing to the banks of the Mississippi the 
handful of French and Canadians who were struggling 
against starvation, in their irrational search after sudden 
wealth on the sterile beaches of Mississippi Sound and 
Massacre Island. 



14 TJIE CKKOLKS OF LOUISIANA. 

The year before liieiiville secured this long-sought 
authorization to found a new post on the Mississippi he 
had selected its site. It was immediately on the bank 
of the stream. iS'o later sagacity has ever succeeded in 
pointing out a more favorable site on which to put up the 
gates of the great valley ; and here — though the land was 
only ten feet above sea-level at the M-ater's edge, and sank 
(juickly back to a niininniiii height of a few inches; 
though it was almost wholly covered with a cypress 
swamp and was visibly subject to frequent, if not annual 
overflow ; and though a hundred miles lay between it and 
the mouth of a river whose current, in times of flood, it 
was maintained, no vessel could overcome — here Bienville, 
in 1718, changed from the midshipman of twenty-two to 
the frontiersman, explorer, and commander of forty-one, 
placed a detachment of twenty-five convicts and as many 
carpenters, who, with some voyageurs from the Illinois 
Kiver, made a clearing and erected a few scattered huts 
along the bank of the river, as the beginning of that which 
he was determined later to make the capital of the civili- 
zation to whose planting in this gloomy wilderness he had 
dedicated his life. 



III. 

THE CREOLES' CITY. 

Ql CARCELY had the low, clay chimneys of a few woods- 
^-^ men's cabins sent np, through a single cliacge of 
seasons, their lonely smoke-wreaths among the silent wil- 
low jungles of the Mississippi, when Bienville began boldly 
to advocate the removal of the capital to this so-called 
" New Orleans." But, even while he spoke, the place 
suffered a total inundation. Yet he continued to hold it 
as a trading post of the Mississippi Company, and, by the 
close of 1720, began again, in colonial council, to urge it as 
the proper place for the seat of government ; and though 
out-voted, he sent his chief of engineers to the settlement 
" to choose a suitable site for a city worthy to become the 
capital of Louisiana." 

Thereupon might have been seen this engineer, the 
Sieur Le Blond de la Tour, in the garb of a knight of St. 
Louis, modified as might be by the exigencies of the fron- 
tier, in command of a force of galley-slaves and artisans, 
driving stakes, drawing lines, marking off streets and lots, 
a place for the church and a middle front square for a 
place-d'armes ; day by day ditching and palisading ; 



18 THH CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

tlirowing up a rude levee along the livei-front, and gradu- 
ally gathering the scattered settlers of the neighborhood 
into the form of a town. But the location remained the 
same. 

A hundred frail palisade huts, some rude shelters of 
larger size to serve as church, hospital, government house, 
and company's warehouses, a few vessels at anchor in the 
muddy river, a population of three hundred, mostly men 
— such was the dreary hunter's camp, hidden in the stifling 
undergrowth of the half-cleared, miry ground, where, in 
the naming of streets, the dukes of Orleans, Chartres, 
Maine, and Bourbon, the princes of Conti and Conde, and 
the Count of Toulouse, had been honored ; where, finally, 
in June to August, 1722, the royal commissioners con- 
senting, the company's effects and troops were gradu- 
ally removed and Bienville set up his head-quarters ; and 
where this was but just done when, in September, as 
an earnest of the land's fierce inhospitality, a tornado 
whisked away church, hospital, and thirty dwellings, 
prostrated the crops, and, in particular, destroyed the 
priceless rice. 

The next year, 1723, brought no better fortune. At 
home, the distended Mississippi Bubble began to show 
its filminess, and the distress which it spread everywhere 
came across the Atlantic. As in France, the momentary 
stay-stomach was credit. On this basis the company's 
agent and the plantation grantees harmonized ; new in- 
dustries, notably indigo culture, were introduced ; debts 



THE CREOLES' CITY. 19 

were paid with paper, and the embryo city reached the 
number of sixteen hundred inhabitants ; an agricul- 
tiu-al province, whose far-scattered plantations, missions, 
and military posts counted nearly five thousand souls, 
promised her its commercial tribute. 

Then followed collapse, the scaling of debts by royal 
edict, four repetitions of this gross expedient, and, by 
1726, a sounder, though a shorn, prosperity. 

The year 1728 completed the first decade of the town's 
existence. Few who know its history will stand to-day in 
Jackson Square and glance from its quaint, old-fashioned 
gardening to the foreign and antique aspect of the sur- 
rounding architecture — its broad verandas, its deep ar- 
cades, the graceful patterns of its old wrought-iron balco- 
nies, its rich effects of color, of blinding sunlight, and 
of cool shadow — without finding the fancy presently 
stirred up to overleap the beginning of even these time- 
stained features, and recall the humbler town of Jean- 
Baptiste Lemoyne de Bienville, as it huddled about this 
classic spot when but ten years had passed since the first 
blow of the settler's axe had echoed across the waters of 
the Mississippi. 

This, from the beginning, was the Place d'Armes. It 
was of the same rectangular figure it has to-day : larger 
only by the width of the present sidewalks, an open plat 
of coarse, native grass, crossed by two diagonal paths and 
occupying the exact middle of the town fi-ont. Behind 
it, in the mid-front of a like apportionment of ground 



20 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

reserved for ecclesiastical uses, where St. Louis Cathedral 
now overlooks the square, stood the church, built, like 
most of the public buildhigs, of brick. On the chui-ch's 
right were the small guard-house and prisons, and on the 
left the dwelling of some Capuchins. The spiritual care 
of all that portion of the province between the mouths 
of the Mississippi and the Illinois was theirs. On the 
front of the square that Hanked the Place d'Armes above, 
the government-house looked out upon the river. In the 
corresponding s(piare, on the lower side, but facing from 
the river and diagonally opposite the Capuchins, were the 
quarters of the government employes. The grounds that 
faced the upper and lower sides of the Place d'Armes were 
still unoccupied, except by cordwood, entrenching tools, 
and a few pieces of parked artillery, on the one side, and 
a small house for issuing rations on the other. Just off 
the river front, in Toulouse Street, were the smithies of 
the Marine ; correspondingly placed in Du Maine Street 
were two long, narrow buildings, the king's warehouses. 

Ursulines Street was then Arsenal Street. On its first 
upper corner was the hospital, with its grounds extending 
back to the street behind ; while the empty square oppo- 
site, below, reserved for an arsenal, was just receiving, in- 
stead, the foundations of the convent-building that stands 
there to-day. A company of IJrsuline nuns had come the 
year before from France to open a school for girls, and 
to attend the sick in hospital, and were quartered at the 
other end of the town awaiting tlie construction of their 



THE CKEOLES' CITY. 23 

nunnery. It was finished in 1730. They occupied it for 
ninety -four years, and vacated it only in 1824 to remove 
to the larger and more retired convent on the river shore, 
near the present loM^er limits of the city, where they 
remain at the present day. The older house — one of the 
oldest, if not the oldest building, standing in the Missis- 
sippi Valley — became, in 1831, the State House, and in 
1834, as at present, the seat of the Archbishop of 
Louisiana. 

For the rest, there was little but forlorn confusion. 
Though the plan of the town comprised a parallelogram 
of five thousand feet river front by a depth of eighteen 
hundred, and was divided into regular squares of three 
hundred feet front and breadth, yet the appearance of the 
place was disorderly and squalid. A few cabins of split 
boards, thatched with cypress bark, were scattered con- 
fusedly over the ground, surrounded and isolated from 
each other by willow-brakes and reedy ponds and sloughs 
bristling with dwarf palmetto and swarming with reptiles. 
Xo one had built beyond Dauphine Street, the fifth from 
the river, though twenty-two squares stood empty to choose 
among ; nor below the hospital, nor above Bienville Street, 
except that the Governor himself dwelt at the extreme 
upper corner of the town, now the corner of Customhouse 
and Decatur Streets. Orleans Street, cutting the town 
transversely in half behind the church, was a quarter fa- 
vored by the unimportant ; while along the water-front, 
and also in Chartres and Royale Streets, just behind, rose 



24 



THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 



the lionies of tlic colony's offici<al and commercial poten- 
tates : some small, lo\v, and bnilt of cypress, others of 
brick, or brick and frame, broad, and two or two and a 
half stories in height. But about and over all was the 
rank growth of a wet semi-tropical land, especially the 
water-willow, planted here and there in avenues, and else- 
where springing up at wild random amid occasional es- 
says at gardening. 

T 




In the New Convent Garden. 

Such was New Orleans in 1728. The restraints of so- 
cial life had, until now, been few and weak. Some of the 
higher officials had brought their wives from France, and 
a few Canadians theirs from Canada ; but they were a 
small fraction of all. The mass of the men, principally 
soldiers, trappers, redemptioners bound to three years' 



THE CREOLES' CITY. 25 

sei'vice, miners, galley-slaves, knew little, and cared less, 
for citizenship or public order; while the women, still 
few, were, almost all, the unreformed and forcibly trans- 
ported inmates of houses of correction, with a few Choc- 
taw squaws and African slaves. They gambled, fought 
duels, lounged about, drank, wantoned, and caroused — 
" Sans religion, sans justice, sans discipline, sans ordre, 
et sans police." 

Yet the company, as required by its charter, had begun 
to improve the social as well as the architectural features 
of its provincial capital. The importation of male vaga- 
bonds had ceased ; stringent penalties had been laid upon 
gambling, and as already noted, steps had been taken to 
promote education and religion. The aid of the Jesuits 
had been enlisted for the training of the male youth and 
the advancement of agriculture. 

In the winter of 1727-28 a crowning benefit had been 
reached. On the levee, just in front of the Place d'Armes 
the motley public of the wild town was gathered to see a 
goodly sight. A ship had come across the sea and up the 
river with the most precious of all possible earthly car- 
goes. She had tied up against the grassy, willow-planted 
bank, and there were coming ashore and grouping to- 
gether in the Place d'Armes under escort of the Ur- 
suline nuns, a good threescore, not of houseless girls 
from the streets of Paris, as heretofore, but of maidens 
from the hearthstones of France, to be disposed of under 
the discretion of the nuns, in marriage. And then there 



26 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

came ashore and were set down in the rank grass, many 
small, stent chests of clothing. There was a trunk for 
each maiden, a maiden for each trunk, and both maidens 
and trunks the gift of the king. 

Vive le roi ! it was a golden day. Better still, this was 
but the initial consignment. Similar companies came in 
subsequent years, and the girls with trunks were long- 
known in the traditions of their colonial descendants by 
the honorable distinction of the '■^Jilles a la cassette " — the 
casket-girls. There cannot but linger a regret around this 
slender fact, so full of romance and the best poetry of real 
life, that it is so slender. But the Creoles have never 
been careful for the authentication of their traditions, and 
the only assurance left to us so late as this is, that the 
good blood of these modest girls of long-forgotten names, 
and of the brave soldiers to whom they gave their hands 
with the king's assent and dower, flows in the veins of 
the best Creole families of the present day. 

Thus, at the end of the first ten years, the town summed 
up all the true, though roughly outlined, features of a 
civilized community : the church, the school, courts, hos- 
pital, council-hall, virtuous homes, a military arm and a 
commerce. This last was fettered by the monopoly rights 
of the company ; but the thirst for gold, silver, and pearls 
had yielded to wiser thought, a fur trade had developed, 
and the scheme of an agricultural colony was rewarded 
with success. 

But of this town and ])rovince, to whose development 



THE CREOLES' CITY. 27 

their founder had dedicated all his energies and sagacity, 
Bienville was no longer governor. In October, 1726, the 
schemes of official rivals had procured not only his dis- 
placement, but that of his various kinsmen in the colony. 
It was under a new commandant-general, M. Perier, that 
protection from flood received noteworthy attention, and 
that, in 1726, the first levee worthy of the name was built 
on the bank of the Mississippi. 



IV. 

AFRICAN SLAVES AND INDIAN WARS. 

rpilE problem of civilization in Louisiana was early 
complicated by the presence and nnitual contact of 
three races of men. The Mississippi Company's agricul- 
tural colonial scheme was based on the AVest Indian idea 
of African slave labor. Already the total number of 
blacks had risen to equal that of the whites, and within 
the Delta, outside of New Orleans, they must have largely 
preponderated. In 1727 this idea began to be put into 
effect just without the town's upper boundary, where the 
Jesuit fathers accommodated themselves to it in model 
form, and between 172G and 1745 gradually acquired and 
put under cultivation the whole tract of land now covered 
by the First District of Xew Orleans, the centre of the 
city's wealth and commerce. The slender, wedge-shaped 
space between Common and Canal Streets, and the sub- 
sequent accretions of soil on the river front, are the only 
parts of the First District not once comprised in the Jesu- 
its' plantations. Education seems not to have had their 
immediate attention, but a myrtle orchard was planted 
on their river-front, and the orange, fig, and sugar-cane 



AFRICAN SLAVES AND INDIAN WARS. 29 

were introduced by them into the country at later inter- 
vals. 

Other and older plantations were yearly sending in 
the products of the same unfortunate agricultural system. 
The wheat and the flour from the Illinois and the Wabash 
were the results of free farm and mill labor ; but the 
tobacco, the timber, the indigo, and the rice came mainly 
from the slave-tilled fields of the company's grantees scat- 
tered at wide intervals in the more accessible regions 
of the great Delta. The only free labor of any note 
employed within that basin was a company of Alsatians, 
which had been originally settled on the Arkansas by 
John Law, but which had descended to within some 
thirty miles of ^New Orleans, had there become the mar- 
ket-gardeners of the growing town, in more than one ad- 
verse season had been its main stay, and had soon won 
and long enjoyed the happy distinction of hearing their 
region called in fond remembrance of the rich Burgun- 
dian hills of the same name far beyond the ocean — the 
Cote (VOr, the " Golden Coast." 

The Indians had welcomed the settling of the French 
with feasting and dancing. The erection of forts among 
them at Biloxi, Mobile, the Natchez bluffs, and elsewhere, 
gave no confessed offence. Their game, the spoils of their 
traps, their lentils, their corn, and their woodcraft were 
always at the white man's service, and had, more than 
once, come between him and starvation. They were not 
the less acceptable because their donors counted on gener- 



30 THE CKEOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

0U8 offsets in powder and ball, brandy, blankets, and gew- 
gaws. 

In the Delta proper, the Indians were a weak and di- 
vided remnant of the Alibamon race, dwellin<r in scat- 
tered sub-tribal villages of a few scores or hundreds of 
warriors each. It was onl}^ beyond these limits that the 
powerful nations of the Clioctaws, the Chickasaws, and 
the Natchez, offered any suggestions of possible war. 

Bienville had, from his first contact with them, shown 
a thorough knowledge of the Indian character. By a pat- 
ronage supported on one side by inflexibility, and on the 
other by good faith, he inspired the respect and confi- 
dence of all alike ; and, for thirty years, neither the sloth- 
ful and stupid Alibamons of the Delta nor the proud and 
fierce nations around his distant posts gave any serious 
cause to fear the disappearance of good-will. 

But M. Perier, who had succeeded Bienville, though up- 
right in his relations with his ministerial superiors, was 
more harsh than wise, and one of his subordinates, hold- 
ing the command of Fort Rosalie, among the distant 
Natchez (a position requiring the greatest diplomacy), was 
arrogant, cruel, and unjust. Bienville had not long been 
displaced when it began to be likely that the Frenchmen 
who had come to plant a civilization in the swamps of 
Louisiana, under circumstances and surroundings so new 
and strange as those we have noticed, would have to take 
into their problem this additional factor, of a warfare with 
the savages of the country. 



AFRICAlSr SLAVES AND INDIAN WARS. 31 

AVhen the issue came, its bloody scenes were far re- 
moved from that region which has grown to be special- 
ly the land of the Creoles ; and, in that region, neither 
Frenchman nor Creole was ever forced to confront the 
necessity of defending his home from the torch, or his 
wife and children from the tomahawk. 

The first symptom of danger was the visible discontent 
of the Chickasaws, with whom the English were in amity, 
and of the Choctaws. Perier, however, called a council 
of their chiefs in New Orleans, and these departed with 
protestations of friendship and loyalty that deceived him. 

Suddenly, in the winter of 1729-30, a single soldier 
arrived in New Orleans from Fort Kosalie, with the 
word that the Katchez had surprised and destroyed the 
place, massacred over two hundred men, and taken cap- 
tive ninety-two women and one hundred and fifty-five chil- 
dren. A few others, who, with their forerunner, were all 
who had escaped, appeared soon after and confirmed the 
news. Smaller settlements on the Yazoo Kiver and on 
Sicily Island, on the "Washita, had shared a like fate. 

In New Orleans all was confusion and alarm, with prep- 
arations for war, offensive and defensive. Arms and am- 
munition were hurriedly furnished to every house in the 
town and on the neighboring plantations. Through the 
weedy streets and in from the adjacent country, along 
the levee top and by the plantation roads and causeways, 
the militia, and, from their wretched barracks in Koy- 
ale Street, the dilapidated regulars, rallied to the Place 



32 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

d'Armes. Thence the governor presently despatched 
three hundred of each, under one of his captains, to the 
seat of war. The entrenching tools and artillery were 
brought out of the empty lot in St. Peter Street, and a 
broad moat was begun, on which work was not abandoned 
until at the end of a year the town was, for the first time, 
surrounded with a line of rude fortifications. 

Meanwhile, the burdens of war distributed themselves 
upon the passive as well as upon the active ; terror of at- 
tack, sudden alarms, false hopes, anxious suspense, further 
militia levies, the issue of colonial paper, industrial stag- 
nation, the care of homeless refugees, and, by no means 
least, the restiveness of the negroes. The bad effects of 
slave-holding began to show themselves. The nearness 
of some small vagrant bands of friendly Indians, habitual 
hangers-on of the settlement, became " a subject of ter- 
ror," and, with a like fear of the blacks, fierce Africans 
taken in war, led to an act of shocking cruelty. A band 
of negroes, slaves of the company, armed and sent for the 
purpose by Perier himself, fell upon a small party of 
Chouachas Indians dwelling peaceably on the town's lower 
border, and massacred the entire village. Emboldened 
by this the negroes plotted a blow for their own freedom ; 
but their plans were discovered and the leaders were 
executed. In the year after, the same blacks, incited by 
fugitive slaves sent among them by the Chickasaws, 
agreed upon a night for the massacre of the whites ; but 
a negress who had been struck by a soldier let slip the 



AFRICAN SLAVES AND INDIAN WARS. 33 

secret in her threats, and the ringleaders, eight men and 
the woman, were put to death, she on the gallows and 
they on the wheel. The men's heads were stuck upon 
posts at the upper and lower ends of the town front, and 
at the Tchoupitoulas settlement and the king's plantation 
on the farther side of the Mississippi. 

But turning a page of the record we see our common 
human nature in a kindlier aspect. Two hundred and 
fifty women and children taken by the Katchez had been 
retaken, and were brought to ]S[ew Orleans and landed on 
the Place d'Armes. There they were received by the 
people with tears and laughter and open arms. At first, 
room was made for them in the public hospital ; but the 
Ursulines, probably having just moved into their com- 
pleted convent, adopted the orphan girls. The boys 
found foster-parents in well-to-do families, and the whole 
number of refugees was presently absorbed, many of the 
widows ao;ain becomino' wives. 

The Chickasaws and Yazoos became allies of the 
Natchez, and the Choctaws of the French. But space 
does not permit nor our object require us to follow the 
camp of the latter, to recount their somewhat dilatory suc- 
cesses on the Natchez hills, and in the swamps of the 
AVashita, or on the distant banks of Red River nnder the 
intrepid St. Denis. The Natchez nation was completely 
dismembered. The prisoners of war were sent across the 
Gulf to die in the cruel slavery of the San Domingo sugar 
plantations. The few survivors who escaped captivity 



34 THE CKE0LE8 OF LOUISIANA. 

were adopted into the Chickasaw nation ; but even so, they 
qiialilied by repeated depredations the limited peace that 
followed. 

In 1733, Bienville was restored to the governorsliii); 
but his power to coinniand the confidence and good faith 
of the sav^ages was lost. In 1735, aggressions still con- 
tinuing, he demanded of the Chickasaws the surrender 
of their Natchez and Yazoo refugees, and was refused. 
Thereupon he was ordered to make war, and the early 
spring of 173G saw Kew Orleans again in the stirring con- 
fusion of marshalling a small army. The scene of its em- 
barkation was the little village of St. John, on the bayo\i 
of that name, where, in thirty barges and as many ca- 
noes, this motley gathering of uniformed regulars, leather- 
shirted militia, naked blacks, and feathered and painted 
Indians, set off through the tall bulrushes, and canebrakes, 
and moss-hung cypresses, and so on by way of the lakes, 
Mississippi Sound, and the Alabama Ilivei', to exterminate 
the Chickasaws. A few months passed, and the same 
spot witnessed another scene, when Bienville disembarked 
under its wide-spreading oaks and stately magnolias, the 
remnant of his forces, sick, Avounded, and discouraged, 
after a short, inglorious, and disastrous campaign in what 
is now Northeastern Mississippi. 

Bienville's years — he was still but fifty-six — will 
hardly account for the absence of that force and sagacity 
which had once made him so admirable and of such great 
value ; but whatever may have been the cause, the colo- 



AFRICAN SLAVES AND INDIAN WARS. 35 

nists, in whose affections he still held the foremost place, 
found in him only a faltering and mismanaging leader 
into disasters, whose record continued from this time to be 
an unbroken series of pathetic failures. 

The year 1739 saw the French authority still defied and 
the colony's frontier harassed. In Septembei", Bienville 
mustered another force. The regulars, the militia, three 
companies of marines lately from France, and sixteen 
hundred Indians, filed out through Tchoupitoulas gate and 
started for the Chickasaw country, this time by way of 
the Mississippi. At the present site of Memphis, they 
were joined by levies from Canada and elsewhere, and 
Bienville counted a total force in hand of thirty-six hun- 
dred men, white, red, and black. Xo equal force had 
ever taken the field in Louisiana. But plans had mis- 
carried, provisions were failing, ill-health was general, the 
wide country lying eastward and still to be crossed was 
full of swollen streams, and when the little army again 
took up the line of march, it actually found itself in full 
retreat without having reached the enemy's country. 
Only a detachment of some six or seven hundred Cana- 
dians, French, and Korthern Indians, under a subordinate 
officer, moved upon the Chickasaws, and meeting them 
with sudden energy, before their own weakness could be 
discovered, extorted some feeble concessions in exchange 
for peace. In the spring of 17-10 Bienville returned with 
a sick and starving remnant of his men, and with no 
better result than a discreditable compromise. 



36 TIIK CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

Ten years of unrest, of struggle against savage aggres- 
sion, and for the mastery over two naked races, had now 
passed. Meantime, the commerce of the colony had 
begun to have a liistory. The Company of the Indies, 
into which the Compagnie de FOccident, or Mississij)pi 
Company, had been absorbed, discouraged by the Natchez 
war and better pleased with its privileges on the Guinea 
coast, and in the East Indies, had, as early as June, 1731, 
tendered, and in April had eifected, the surrender of its 
western charter. The king had thereupon established be- 
tween Louisiana and his subjects elsewhei-e a virtual free- 
trade ; a fresh intercourse had sprung up with France and 
the West Indies ; an innnigration had set in from these 
islands, and, despite the Chickasaw campaigns and paper 
money, had increased from year to year. At the close of 
these campaigns, business further revived, and the town, 
as it never had done before, began spontaneously to de- 
velop from within outward by the enterprise of its own 
inhabitants. 

The colony's star was rising, but Bienville's was still 
going down. The new prosperity and growth was not 
attributed, nor is it traceable, to his continued govern- 
ment. As time passed on he was made easily to see that 
he had lost the favor of the French minister. He begged 
to be recalled ; and in May, 1743, on the arrival of the Mar- 
quis de Vaudreuil as his successor, he bade a last farewell 
to the city he had founded and to that Louisiana of which 
it was proper for the people still to call him " the father." 



V. 

THE NEW GENERATION. 

TTTHEN, on the 10th of May, 1743, the Marquis de 
Vaudreuil landed in New Orleans, private enter- 
prise — the true foundation of material prosperity — was 
firmly established. Indigo, rice, and tobacco were moving 
in quantity to Europe, and lumber to the West Indies. 
Ships that went out loaded came back loaded again, es- 
pecially from St. Domingo ; and traffic with the Indians, 
and with the growing white population along the immense 
length of the Mississippi and its tributaries, was bringing 
money into the town and multiplying business year by 
year. 

Hope ran high when the Marquis was appointed. His 
family had much influence at court, and anticipations were 
bright of royal patronage and enterprise in the colony 
and in its capital. But these expectations, particularly as 
to Xew Orleans, were feebly met. There was an increase 
in the number of the troops and a great enhancement of 
superficial military splendor, with an unscrupulous getting 
and reckless spending of Government goods and money, 
and a large importation of pretentious frivolity from 



38 THE CREOLES OV LOUISIANA. 

the Bourbon camps and palaces. By 1751, every second 
man in tlie streets of New Orleans was a soldier in daz- 
zling uniform. They called the governor the " (irand 
Marquis." He was graceful and comely, dignified in 
bearing, fascinathig in address, amiable, lavish, fond of 
pleasure, and, with his marchioness, during the twelve 
years of his sojourn in Louisiana, maintained the little 
colonial court with great pomp and dissipation. 

Otherwise the period was of a quiet, formative sort, 
and the few stinnilants to growth offered by Goveinment 
overshot the town and fell to the agricultural grantees. 
The production of tobacco and myrtle-wax was encour- 
aged, but it was also taxed. Thi'ough the Jesuit fathers, 
sugar-cane was introduced. But one boon continued to 
eclipse all the rest : year by year came the casket-girls, 
and were given in marriage to the soldiers chosen for 
good conduct, with a tract of land to begin life on. The 
last ship-load came ashore in 1751. 

The most conspicuous attentions offered Kew Orleans 
were a prohibition against trading with the English and 
Dutch, and further inundations of paper money. The 
little port continued to grow, though pirates infested the 
Gulf, British privateers were sometimes at the very 
mouth of the river, seasons were adverse, and Indian allies 
insolent. It was reported with pride, that forty-five 
brick houses were erected betM^een the autumns of 1749 
and 1752. 

Among the people a transmutation was going on. 



THE NEW GENERATION. 39 

French fathers were moving aside to make room for 
Creole sons. The life of the seniors had been what the 
life of redemptioners and liberated convicts, combining 
with that of a French and Swiss line and staff in and 
about the outposts of such a frontier, might be : idle, 
thriftless, gallant, bold, rude", free, and scornful of labor, 
which the company had brought into permanent contempt 
by the introduction of African slaves. In this atmos- 
phere they had brought up their children. Kow these 
children were taking their parents' places, and with Latin 
ductility were conforming to the mold of their nearest 
surroundings. They differed from their transatlantic stock 
much as the face of nature in Louisiana differed from that 
in France. A soil of unlimited fertility became, through 
slavery, not an incentive to industry, but a promise of un- 
earned plenty. A luxurious and enervating climate joined 
its influence with this condition to debase even the Gallic 
love of pleasure to an unambitious apathy and an untrained 
sensuality. The courteous manners of France were 
largely retained ; but the habit of commanding a dull and 
abject slave class, over which a " black code " gave every 
white man full powers of police, induced a certain fierce 
iniperiousness of will and temper ; while that proud love 
of freedom, so pervasive throughout the American wilder- 
ness, rose at times to an attitude of arrogant superiority 
over all constraint, and became the occasion of harsh com- 
ment in the reports sent to France by the officers of their 
king. In the lakes, caueb rakes, and swamps, and on the 



40 THE Ci: HOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

bayou ridges, of their dark, wet forestB, and on the sunny 
expanses of their marshes, a great abundance of beai"s, 
panthers, deei*, swan, geese, and lesser game gave a l)old 
zest to arduous sport. The chase became ahnost the only 
form of exertion, and woodcraft often tlie only education. 
As for the gentler sex, catching less grossness from 
negro slavery and less rudeness from the wilderness, they 
were, in mind as well as morals, superior to the men. 
They could read and write and make a little music. Such 
French vivacity as still remained chose the ball-room as 
their chief delight, while the gaming-table was the indoor 
passion of the men. Unrestrained, proud, intrepid, self- 
reliant, rudely voluptuous, of a high intellectual order, 
yet uneducated, unreasoning, impulsive, and inliannnable 
— such was the first native-born generation of Franco- 
Louisianiaus. 



VI. 

THE FIRST CREOLES. 

TTTIIAT is a Creole ? Even in Louisiana the question 
would be variously answered.' The title did not 
here first belong to the descendants of Spanish, but of 
French settlers. But such a meaning implied a certain 
excellence of origin, and so came early to include any 
native, of French or Spanish descent by either parent, 
whose uon-alliance with the slave race entitled him to 
social rank. Later, the term was adopted by — not con- 
ceded to — the natives of mixed blood, and is still so used 
among themselves. At length the spirit of commerce 



' As to the etymology of the word there are many conjectures, but 
few bold assertions. Is it Spanish ? — Italian '?— Carib y — an invention 
of West Indian Spanish conquerors ? None of these questions meet an 
answer in the form of hearty assertion. In the American Journal of 
Philology (October, 1882), Professor Harrison, of Washington and Lee 
University, Virginia, after exhausting Littre on the subject, says of 
Skeat, that "He proceeds with agile pen — dashes, abbreviations, equa- 
tion lines — to deduce the word, though with many misgivings, from the 
Spanish cn'oUo, a native of America or the West Indies ; a corrupt word 
made by the negroes, said to be a contraction of criadillo, diminutive of 
crindo — one educated, instructed or bred up, pp. of criar, lit. to create, 
also to nurse, instruct." 



42 TIIK CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

saw the money value of so lionored a title, and broadened 
its meaning to take in any creature or thing of variety or 
manufacture peculiar to Louisiana that might become an 
object of sale : as Creole ponies, chickens, cows, shoes, 
eggs, wagons, baskets, cabbages, negroes, etc. Yet the 
Creoles pi-oper will not share their distinction with the 
worthy '' Acadian." lie is a Creole only by courtesy, 
and in the second person singular. Besides French and 
Spanish, there are even, for convenience of speech, "col- 
ored" Creoles; but there are no Italian, or Sicilian, nor 
any English, Scotch, Irish, or " Yankee " Creoles, unless 
of parentage married into, and themselves thoroughly 
proselyted in, Creole society. Neither Spanish nor Amer- 
ican domination has taken from the Creoles their French 
vernacular. This, also, is part of their title ; and,, in fine, 
there seems to be no more serviceable definition of the 
Creoles of Louisiana than this: that they are the French- 
speaking, native portion of the ruling class. 

There is no need to distinguish between the liigher and 
liumbler grades of tliose from whom tliey sprang. A few 
settlers only were ]iersons of rank and station. Many 
were the children of the ca,^ket-girls, and many were of 
such stock as society pi-onounccs less than nothing ; yet, 
in view of that state of society which the French revolu- 
tion later overturned, any present overplus of honor may 
as well fall to the children of those who filled the prisons 
before, as of those who filled them during that bloody 
convulsion. 



THE PIEST CEEOLES. 45 

In the days of De Vaudreuil, the dwellings of the bet- 
ter class that had stood at first on the immediate front 
of the town, or on the first street behind, seem to have 
drawn back a square or two. They were also spreading 
toward and out through a gate in the palisade wall near 
its north corner. Bayou Iload, now a street of the city, 
issued from this gate northward to the village and bayou 
of S.t. John. Along this suburban way, surrounded by 
broad grounds, deeply shaded with live-oaks, magnolias, 
and other evergi-een forest trees, and often having behind 
them plantations of indigo or myrtle, rose the wide, red- 
roofed, but severely plain dwellings of the rich, generally 
of one or one and a half stories, but raised on pillars 
often fifteen feet from the ground, and surrounded by 
wide verandas. 

In the lofty halls and spacious drawing-rooms of these 
homes — frequently, too, in the heart of the town, in the 
houses of the humblest exterior, their low, single-story 
wooden or brick walls rising from a ground but partly 
drained even of its storm water, infested with reptile life 
and frequently overflowed — was beginning to be shown a 
splendor of dress and personal adornment hardly in har- 
mony with the rude simplicity of apartments and furni- 
ture, and scarcely to be expected in a town of unpaved, 
unlighted, and often impassable streets, surrounded by 
swamps and morasses on one of the M'ildest of American 
frontiers. 

Slaves — not always or generally the dull, ill-featured 



46 THE CRKOLKS OF LOIISIAXA. 

Congo or fierce JJanbara, imported for the plantation.^ but 
comely Yaloff and Mandingo boys and girls, the shapelier 
for their scanty dress — waited on every caprice, whether 
good or ill, and dropped themselves down in the corridors 
and on the verandas for stolen naps among the dogs, and 
whips and saddles, in such odd moments of day or night as 
found their masters and mistresses tired of beiny; served. 
Kew Orleans had been the one colonized spot in the Delta 
where slaves were few, but now they rapidly became 
numerous, and black domestic service made it easy for the 
Creoles to emulate the ostentatious living of the colonial 
officials. 

To their bad example in living, these dignitaries, almost 
without exception, added that of corruption in office. 
Governors, royal commissaries, post-commandants, — the 
Marchioness de Yaudreuil conspicuously, — and many 
lesser ones, stood boldly accusing and accused of the 
grossest and the pettiest misdemeanors. Doubtless the 
corruption was exaggerated ; yet the testimony is official, 
abundant, and corroborative, and is verified in the ruinous 
expenses which at length drove France to abandon the 
maintenance and sovereignty of the colony she had mis- 
governed for sixty-three years. 

Meanwhile, public morals wei'e debased ; idleness and 
intemperance were general ; speculation in the depreciated 
paper money which flooded the colony became the prin- 
cipal business, and insolvency the commo'n condition. 

Heligion and education made poor headway. Almost 




Old Canal in Dauphine Street. 



THE FIRST CREOLES. 49 

the only item in their history is a " war of the Jesuits and 
Capuchins." Its " acrimonious writings, squibs, and pas- 
quinades" made much heat for years. Its satirical songs 
were heard, it appears, in the drawing-rooms as well as in 
the street ; for the fair sex took sides in it with lively 
zeal. In July, 1763, the Capuchins were left masters of 
the field. The decree of the French parliament had the 
year before ordered the Jesuits' expulsion from the 
realm ; their wide plantations just beyond the town wall 
being desirable, the Creole "Superior Council" became 
bold, and the lands already described as the site of the 
richest district in the present Kew Orleans were confis- 
cated and sold for $180,000. 

In this same year, a flag, not seen there before, began 
to appear in the yellow harbor of New Orleans. In Feb- 
ruary, a treaty between England, France, and Spain, gave 
Great Britain all that immense part of the Mississippi 
Valley east of the river and north of Orleans Island. The 
Delta remained to France and to her still vast province of 
Louisiana. The navigation of the Mississippi was made 
free to the subjects of both empires alike. Trade with 
British vessels was forbidden the French colonies ; yet a 
lively commerce soon sprang up with them at a point just 
above the plantations of the dispossessed Jesuits, after- 
ward the river front of the city of Lafayette, and now of 
the Fourth District of New Orleans. Here numerous 
trading vessels, sailing under the British flag, ascending 
the river and passing the town on the pretext of visiting 
4 



50 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

the new British posts of Manchae and Baton llouge, 
tied to tlie waterside willows and carried on a eonnnerce 
with the merchants of the post they had just passed by. 

The corrupt authoi-ities winked at a practice that 
brought wealth to all, and the getting of honest rights by 
disingenuous and dishonest courses became the justified 
habit of the highest classes and the leading minds. The 
slave trade, too, received an unfortunate stimulus : a large 
business was done at this so-called " Little Manchae,"' in 
Guinea negroes, whom the colonists bought of the Eng- 
lish. 

The governor of Louisiana at this time was Kerlerec, a 
distinguished captain in the French navy. lie had suc- 
ceeded the Marquis in 1753, and had now governed the 
provincefor ten years. But he had lately received orders 
to return to France and render account of his conduct in 
office. A work of retrenchment was begun. The troops 
were reduced to three hundred. In June, a M. d' Abba- 
die landed in New Orleans, commissioned to succeed the 
governor under the shorn honors and semi-commercial 
title of director-general. Kerlerec, sailing to France, was 
cast into the Bastile and " died of grief shortly after his 
release." 

The Creoles noted, with nnich agitation, these and 
other symptoms of some unrevealed design to alter their 
political condition. By and by, rumor of what had se- 
cretly been transacted began to reach their ears in the 
most offensive shape. Yet, for a time, M. d'Abbadie 



THE FIEST CREOLES. 51 

himseJf remained officially as uninformed as they; and 
it M-as only in October, 1754, tM-enty-tliree months 'after 
the signing of a secret act at Fontainebleau, that the au- 
thoritative announcement reached New Orleans of her 
cession, with all of French Louisiana, to the King of 
Spain. 

Such is the origin, surrounding influences, and resulting 
character and life of the earliest Creoles of Louisian.x 
With many influences against them, they rose from a 
chaotic condition below the plane of social order to the 
station of a proud, freedom-loving, agricultural, and com- 
mercial people, who were now about to strike the first 
armed blow ever aimed by Americans against a royal de- 
cree. 

Their descendants would be a community still more 
unique than they are, had they not the world-wide trait of 
a pride of ancestry. But they might as easily be excused 
for boasting of other things which they have overlooked. 
A pride of ascent would be as well grounded ; and it will 
be pleasant to show in later chapters that the decadence 
imputed to them, sometimes even by themselves, has no 
foundation in fact, but that their course, instead, has 
been, in the main, upward from first to last, and so con- 
tinues to-day. 



VII. 

PRAYING TO THE KING. 

A SINGLE paragraph in recapitulation. 

In 1699, France, by the liand of her gallant 
sailor, D'Iberville, founded the province of Louisiana. 
In 1718, his brother, Bienville, laid out the little paral- 
lelogram of streets and ditches, and palisaded lots which 
formed Xew Orleans. Here, amid the willow-jungles of 
the Mississippi's low banks, under the glaring sunshine of 
bayou clearings, in the dark shadows of the Delta's wet 
forests, the Louisiana Creoles came into existence — val- 
orous, unlettered, and unrestrained, as military outpost 
life in such a land might make them. In sentiment they 
were loyal to their king ; in principle, to themselves and 
their soil. Sixty-three years had passed, with floods and 
famines and Indian wars, corrupt misgovernment and its re- 
sultant distresses, when in 1762 it suited the schemes of an 
unprincipled court secretly to convey the unprofitable colony 
— land and people, all and singular — to the King of Spain. 

In the early summer of 1764, before the news of this 
unfeeling barter had startled the ears of the colonists, a 
certain class in New Orleans had be<!;un to make formal 



PRAYING TO THE KING. 53 

complaint of a condition of affairs in their sorry little 
town (comnaercial and financial rather than political) that 
seemed to them no longer bearable. There had been 
commercial development ; but, in the light of their griev- 
ances, this only showed through what a debris of public 
disorder the commerce of a country or town may make a 
certain progress. 

These petitioners were the merchants of New Orleans. 
Their voice was now heard for the first time. The pri- 
vate material interests of the town and the oppressions of 
two corrupt governments were soon to come to an open 
struggle. It was to end, for the Creoles, in ignominy and 
disaster. But in better years further on there was a time 
in store when arms should no longer overawe ; but when 
commerce, instead, was to rule the destinies, not of a 
French or Spanish military post, but of the great south- 
ern sea-port of a nation yet to be. Meanwhile the spirit 
of independence was stirring within the inhabitants. 
They scarcely half recognized it themselves (there is a 
certain unconsciousness in truth and right) ; but their 
director-general's zeal for royalty w^as chafed. 

" As I was finishing this letter," wrote M. d'Abbadie, 
" the merchants of New Orleans presented me with a 
petition, a copy of which I have the honor to forward. 
You will find in it those characteristic features of sedition 
and insubordination of which I complain." 

A few months later came word of the cession to Spain. 
The people refused to believe it. It was nothing that the 



54 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

king's letter directly stated the fact. It was nothing that 
official instructions to M. d'Abbadie as to the manner of 
evacuating and surrendering the province were full and 
precise. It was nothing that copies of the treaty and of 
Spain's letter of acceptance were spread out in the council 
chamber, where the humblest white man could go and 
read them. Such perfidy was simply incredible. The 
transfer must be a make-believe, or they were doomed to 
bankruptcy — not figuratively only, but, as we shall pres- 
ently see, literally also. 

So, when doubt could stay no longer, hope took its 
place — the hope that a prayer to their sovereign might 
avert the consummation of the treaty, Avhich had already 
lieen so inexplicably delayed. On a certain day, there- 
fore, early in 1705, there was an imposing gathering on 
that Place d'Armes already the place of romantic remin- 
iscences. The voice of the people was to be heard in 
advocacy of their rights. Xearly all the notables of the 
town were present ; planters, too, from all the nearer 
parts of the Delta, with some of the superior council and 
other officials — an odd motley of lace and flannel, pow- 
dered wigs, buckskin, dress-swords, French leather, and 
cow-hide. One Jean Milhet was there. He was the 
wealthiest merchant in the town. lie had signed the 
petition of the previous June, wuth its " features of sedi- 
tion and insubordination." And he was now sent to 
France with this new prayer that the king would arrange 
with Spain to nullify the act of cession. 



PKAYING TO THE KING. 55 

Milhet, in Paris, sought out Bienville. But the ex-gov- 
ernor of the province and unsuccessful campaigner against 
its Indian foes, in his eighty-sixth year, was fated to fail 
once more in his effort to serve Louisiana. They sought 
together the royal audience. But the minister, the Due 
de Choiseul (the transfer had been part of his policy) 
adroitly barred the way. They never saw the king, and 
their mission was brought to naught with courteous des- 
patch. Such was the word Milhet sent back. But a 
hope without foundations is not to be undermined. The 
Creoles, in 1760, heard his ill-tidings without despair, and 
fed their delusion on his continued stay in France and on 
the non-display of the Spanish authority. 

By another treaty Great Britain had received, as already 
mentioned, a vast territory on the eastern side of the 
Mississippi. This transfer was easier to understand. The 
English had gone promptly into possession, and, much to 
the mental distress of the acting-governor of Louisiana, 
M. Aubry (M. d'Abbadie having died in 1765), were mak- 
ing the harbor of New Orleans a highway for their men- 
of-war and transports, while without ships, ammunition, 
or money, and with only a few soldiers, and they entitled 
to their discharge, he awaited Spain's languid receipt of 
the gift which had been made her only to keep it from 
these very English. 

But, at length, Spain moved, or seemed about to move. 
Late in the summer a letter came to the superior council 
from Havana, addressed to it by Don Antonio de Ulloa, a 



r)0 TIIK CUKOLES 01" LOriSIANA. 

conunodore in tlic Spanish navy, a scientific scholar and 
author of renown, and now revealed as the royally com- 
missioned grovernor of Louisiana. This letter announced 
tliat Don Antonio would soon arrive in Kew Orleans. 

Here was another seed of cruel delusion. For month 
after month went by, the year closed, January and Feb- 
ruary, 17iU), came and passed, and the new governor liad 
not made his appearance. Surely, it seemed, this was all 
a mere diplomatic mananiver. Ihit, when the delay had 
done as much harm as it could, on the 5th of March, 
17«i<I, Ulloa landed in New Orleans. He brought with 
him only two companies of Spanish infantry, his Govern- 
ment having taken the assurance of France that more 
troops would not be needed. 



VIII. 

ULLOA, AUBRY, AND THE SUPERIOR COUNCIL. 

rr^HE cession had now only to go into effect. It seemed 
to the Louisianians a sentence of commercial and 
industrial annihilation, and it was this belief, not loyalty 
to France, that furnished the true motive of the Creoles 
and justification of the struggle of 1768, The merchants 
were, therefore, its mainspring. But merchants are not 
apt to be public leaders. They were behind and under the 
people. Who, then, or what, was in front ? An official 
body whose growth and power in the colony had had great 
influence in forming the public character of the Creoles 
— the Superior Council. 

It was older than New Orleans. Formed in 1712 of 
but two members, of whom the governor was one, but 
gradually enlarged, it dispensed justice and administered 
civil government over the whole colony, under the ancient 
" custom of Paris," and the laws, edicts, and ordinances 
of the kingdom of France. It early contained a germ of 
popular government in its power to make good the want 
of a quorum by calling in notable inhabitants of its own 
selection. By and by its judicial functions had become 



58 THE CllKOLES OF LOT'ISIAXA. 

purely appellate, and it took on features suggestive, at 
least, of representative rule. 

It was this Superior Couneil wliicii, in 1722, with P>ien- 
ville at its head, removed tu the new settlement of New 
Orleans, and so made it the colony's capital. In 1 r23, it 
was exercising powers of police. It was by this body 
that, in 17*24, was issued that dark enactment which, 
through the dominations of three successive national 
powers, reniainod on the statute-book — the lilack Code. 
One of its aiticles forbade the freeing of a slave without 
reason shown to the Council, and by it esteemed good. In 
172G, its too free spirit was already receiving the repri- 
mand of the home government. Yet, in 1T28, the king 
assigned to it the supervision of land titles and power to 
appoint and remove at will a lower court of its own mem- 
bers. 

AVith each important development in the colony it had 
grown in numbers and powers, and, in 1748, especially, 
had been given discretionary authority over land titles, 
such as must have been a virtual control of the whole ag- 
ricultural comnmnity's moral suppoi-t. Al)0ut 1 752 it is 
seen resisting the encroachments of the Jesuits, though 
these were based on a connnission from the Bishop of 
Quebec; and it was this body that, in 17G3, boldly dis- 
possessed this same order of its plantations, a year before 
the home government expelled it from France. In 1758, 
with Kerlerec at its head, this Council had been too strong 
for Ilochemore, the intendant-commissary, and too free — 



ULLOA, AUBRY, AND THE SUPERIOR COUNCIL. 59 

jostled him rudely for three years, and then procured of 
the king his dismissal from oflfice. And lastly, it was this 
body that d'Abbadie, in another part of the despatch 
already quoted from, denounced as seditious in spirit, 
urging the displacement of its Creole members, and the 
filling of their seats with imported Frenchmen. 

Ulloa, the Spanish governor, stepped ashore on the 
Place d'Armes in a cold rain, with that absence of pomp 
which characterizes both the sailor and the recluse. The 
people received him in cold and haughty silence that soon 
turned to aggression. Foucault, the intendant-commis- 
eary, was the first to move. On the very day of the gov- 
ernor's arrival he called his attention to the French paper 
money left unprovided for in the province. There were 
seven million livres of it, worth only a fourth of its face 
value. "What M'as to be done about it ?" The governor 
answered promptly and kindly : It should be the circulat- 
ing medium at its market value, pending instructions 
from Spain. But the people instantly and clamorously 
took another stand : It must be redeemed at par. 

A few days later he was waited on by the merchants. 
They presented a series of written questions touching 
their commercial interests. They awaited his answers, 
they said, in order to know lioiu to direct their future 
actions. In a despatch to his government, Ulloa termed 
the address " imperious, insolent, and menacing." 

The first approach of the Superior Council was quite as 
offensive. At the head of this body sat Aubry. He was 



60 Tin-: niEOLKs ok Louisiana. 

loyal to his king, brave, and iletcrniined to execute the 
orders he held to transfer the province. The troops were 
under his command. But, by the rules of the Council it 
was the intendant, Foucault, the evil genius of the hoin-, 
M'ho performed the functions of president. Foucault 
ruled the insurgent Council and signed its ])ronuncianiien- 
tos, while Aubry, the sternly protesting but helpless 
governor, filled the seat of honor. And here, too, sat 
Lafreniere, the attorney-general. It was he who had 
harangued the notables and the people on the Place 
d'Arnies when they sent Milliet to France. The petition 
to the king was from his turgid pen. lie was a Creole, 
the son of a poor Canadian, and a striking type of the 
people that now looked to him as their leader : of com- 
manding mien, luxurious in his tastes, passionate, over- 
bearing, ambitious, replete with wild energy, and 
equipped with the wordy eloquence that moves the ignor- 
ant or half-informed. The Council requested Ulloa to 
exhibit his commission. He replied coldly that he would 
not take possession of the colony until the arrival of ad- 
ditional Spanish troops, which he was expecting ; and 
that then his dealings would be with the French gov- 
ernor, Aubry, and not with a subordinate civil body. 

Thus the populace, the merchants, and the civil govern- 
ment — which included the judiciary — ranged themselves 
at once in hostility to Spain. The military soon moved 
forward and took their stand on the same line, refusing 
point-blank to pass into the Spanish service. Aubry 



ULLOA, AUBRY, AND THE SUPERIOR COUNCIL. 61 

alone recognized the cession and Ulloa's powers, and to 
him alone Ulloa showed his commission. Yet the Span- 
ish governor virtnally assumed control, set his few Span- 
ish soldiers to building and garrisoning new forts at im- 
portant points in various quarters, and, with Aubry, 
endeavored to maintain a conciliatory policy pending the 
arrival of ti'oops. It was a policy wise only because 
momentarily imperative in dealing with such a people. 
They were but partly conscious of their rights, but they 
were smarting under a lively knowledge of their wrongs', 
and their impatient temper could brook any other treat- 
ment with better dignity and less resentment than that 
which trifled with their feelings. 

Ill-will began, before long, to find open utterance. An 
arrangement by which the three or four companies of 
French soldiers remained in service under Spanish pay, 
but under French colors and Aubry's command, was 
fiercely denounced. 

Ulloa was a man of great amiability and enlighten- 
ment, but nervous and sensitive, l^ot only was the de- 
fective civilization around him discordant to his gentle 
tastes, but the extreme contrast which his personal char- 
acter offered was an intolerable offence to the people. 
Yet he easily recognized that behind and beneath all their 
frivolous criticisms and imperious demands, and the fierce 
determination of their Superior Council to resist all con- 
tractions of its powers, the true object of dread and aver- 
sion was the iron tyrannies and extortions of Spanish 



02 TlIK CKEOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

colonial revenue lawti. This feeling it was that had pro- 
duced the offensive memorial of the merchants ; and yet 
he met it kindly, and, only two months after his arrival, 
began a series of concessions lookinu- to the j»reservation 
of trade with France and the French West Indies, which 
the colonists had believed themselves doomed to lose. 
The people met these concessions with resentful remon- 
strance. One of the governoFs proposals was to fix a 
schedule of reasonable prices on all imported goods, 
through the appraisement of a board of disinterested citi- 
zens. Certainly it was unjust and oppressive, as any 
Spanish commercial ordinance was likely to be ; but it 
was intended to benefit the mass of consumers. But con- 
sumers and suppliers for once had struck hands, and the 
whole people raised a united voice of such grievous com- 
plaint that the ordinance was verbally revoked. 

A further motive— the fear of displacement — moved 
the oflice-holders, and kept them nuiliciously diligent. 
Every harmless incident, every trivial mistake, was 
caught up vindictively. The governor's " manner of liv- 
ing, his tastes, his habits, his conversation, the most triv- 
ial occurrences of his household," were construed offen- 
sively. He grew incensed and began to threaten. In 
December, 1767, Jean Milhet returned from France. His 
final word of ill-success was only fuel to the fire. The 
year passed away, and nine months of 176S followed. 

UUoa and Aubry kept well together, though Aubry 
thought ill of the Spaniard's administrative powers. In 



ULLOA, AUBKY, AlVD THE SUPERIOR COUNCIL. 63 

their own eyes they seemed to be having some success. 
They were, wrote Anbry, " gradually molding Frenchmen 
to Spanish domination." The Spanish flag floated over 
the new military' posts, the French ensign over the old, 
and the colony seemed to be dwelling in peace under both 
standards. 

But Ulloa and the Creoles were sadly apart. Kepeated 
innovations in matters of commerce and police were only 
so many painful surprises to them. They M'ere embar- 
rassed. They were distressed. What was to become of 
their seven million livres of paper money no one yet could 
tell. Even the debts that the Spaniards had assumed 
were unpaid. Values had shrunk sixty-six per cent. 
There was a specie famine. Insolvency was showing it- 
self on every hand ; and the disasters that were to follow 
the complete establishment of Spanish power were not 
known but might be guessed. They returned the gov- 
ernor distrust for distrust, censure for censure, and scorn 
for scorn. 

And now there came rumor of a royal decree suppress- 
ing the town's commerce with France and the West 
Indies. It was enough. The people of Kew Orleans and 
its adjacent river " coasts," resolved to expel the Span- 
iards. 



IX. 

THE INSURRECTION. 

"VTEW ORLEANS, in 1768, w'as still a town of some 
thirty-two hundred persons only, a third of whom 
were black slaves. It had lain for thirty -five years in the 
reeds and willows with scarcely a notable change to re- 
lieve the poverty of its aspect. During the Indian wars 
barracks had risen on either side of the Place d' Amies. 
When, in 1758, the French evacuated Fort Duquesne 
and floated down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Or- 
leans, Kerlerec added other barracks, part of whose ruin 
still stands in the neighborhood of Barracks Street. Sa- 
lients had been made at the corners of its palisade wall ; 
there was " a banquette within and a veiy ti-itling ditch 
without." Just beyond this wall, on a part of the land of 
the banished Jesuits, in a large, deeply shaded garden, 
was a house that had become the rendezvous of a con- 
spiracy. 

Lafrcni^re sat at the head of its board. His majestic 
airs had got him the nickname of "Louis Quatorze." 
Foucault was conspicuous. Ills friendship with Madame 
Pradal, the lady of the house, was what is called notor- 



THE INSURRECTION". " 65 

ions. Jean Milhet and a brother, Joseph Milhet, and 
other leading merchants, Caresse, Petit, and Poupet, were 
present ; also Doncet, a prominent lawyer, and Marquis, a 
captain of Swiss troops ; with Balthasar de Masan, Hardy 
de Boisblanc, and Joseph Yillere, planters and public 
men, the last, especially, a man of weight. And, as if 
the name of the city's founder must be linked with all 
patriotic disaster, among the number were two of Bien- 
ville's nephews — Noyan, a young ex-captain of cavalry, 
and Bienville, a naval lieutenant, Koyan's still younger 
brother. 

On the 25th of October, ITCS, the mine was sprung. 
From twenty to sixty miles above New Orleans, on the 
banks of the Mississippi, lies the Cote des Allemands, the 
German coast, originally colonized by John Law's Alsa- 
tians. Here the conspirators had spread the belief that 
the Spanish obligations due the farmers there would not 
be paid ; and when, on the date mentioned, Dlloa sent an 
agent to pay them, he was arrested by a body of citizens 
under orders from Yillere, and deprived of the money. 

Just beyond the German coast lay the coast of the 
" Acadians." From time to time, since the peace with 
England, bands of these exiles from distant IvTova Scotia 
bad found their way to Louisiana, some by way of the 
American colonies and the Ohio River, and some — many, 
indeed — by way of St. Domingo, and had settled on the 
shores of the Mississippi above and below the mouth of La 
Fourche and down the banks of that bayou. Hardships 



66 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

and afflictions had come to be the salt of their bread, and 
now a last hope of ending their days under the Hag for 
which they had so pathetic an affection depended njxjn 
the success of this uprising. They joined the insurgents. 

On the 27th, Foucault called a meeting of the Superior 
Council for the 2Sth. In the night, the guns at Tchou- 
pitoulas gate — at the upper river corner — were spiked. 
Farther away, along a narrow road, with the wide and 
silent Mississippi now hidden l)y intervening brakes of 
cotton-wood or willow and now broadening out to view, 
but always on the right, and the dark, wet, moss-draped 
forest always on the left, in rude garb and with rude- 
weapons — nmskets, fowling pieces, anything — the Ger- 
mans and Acadians were marching upon the town. 

On the morning of the 2Sth, they entered Tchoupi- 
toulas gate. At the head of the Acadians was Xoyan. 
A'illeru led the Germans. Other gates were forced, other 
companies entered, stores and dwellings were closed, and 
the insurgents paraded the streets. "All,'' says Aubry, 
"was in a state of combustion." The people gathered on 
the square. " Louis Quatorze " harangued them. So did 
Doucet and the brothers Milhet. Six hundred persons 
signed a petition to the Superior Council, asking the 
official action wliicli the members of that body, then sit- 
ting, were ready and waiting to give. 

Aubry had a total force of one hundred and ten men. 
What he could do he did. lie sent for Lafreniere, an-d 
afterward for Foucault, and protested bitterly, but in vain. 



THE INSURRECTION. 67 

Under liis protection, Ulloa retired with his family on 
board the Spanish frigate, which liad slipped her cables 
from the shore and anchored out in the river. The Span- 
ish governor's staff remained in his house, which they had 
barricaded, surrounded by an angry mob that filled the 
air with huzzas for the King of France. The Council met 
again on the 29th. A French flag had been hoisted in 
the Place d'Armes, and a thousand insurgents gathered 
around it demanding the action of the Council. As that 
body was about to proceed to its final measure, Aubry ap- 
peared before it, warning and reproaching its members. 
Two or three alone wavered, but Lafreniere's counsel pre- 
vailed, and a report was adopted enjoining Ulloa to 
" leave the colony in the frigate in which he came, with- 
out delay." 

Aubry was invited by the conspirators to resume the 
government. His response was to charge them with re- 
bellion and predict their ruin. Ulloa, the kindest if not 
the wisest well-wisher of Louisiana that had held the gu- 
bernatorial commission since Bienville, sailed, not in the 
Spanish frigate, which remained " for i-epairs," but in a 
French vessel, enduring at the last moment the songs and 
jeers of a throng of night roysterers, and the menacing 
presence of sergeants and bailiffs of the Council. 



X. 

THE PRICE OF HALF-CONVICTIONS. 

n^IlE next move on the part of all concerned was to 
hurry forward messengers, with declarations, to the 
courts of France and Spain. The colonists sent theirs ; 
Aubry and Ulloa, each, his ; and Foucault, his — a paper 
characterized by a shameless double-dealing which leaves 
the intendant-commissary alone, of all the participants in 
these events, an infamous memory. 

The memorial of the people was an absurd confusion of 
truth and misstatement. It made admissions fatal to its 
pleadings. It made arrogant announcements of unap- 
plied principles. It enumerated real wrongs, for which 
France and Spain, but not Ulloa, were to blame. And 
with these it mingled such charges against the banished 
governor as : That he had a chapel in his own house ; 
that he absented himself from the French churches ; that 
he enclosed a fourth of the public common to pasture his 
private horses; that he sent to Havana for a wet-nurse ; 
that he ordered the abandonment of a brick-yard near the 
town, on account of its pools of putrid water ; that he re- 
moved leprous children from the town to the inhospitable 



THE PRICE OF HALF-CONVICTIONS. 69 

settlements at the mouth of the river ; that he forbade 
the public whipping of slaves in the town ; that masters 
had to go six miles to get a negro flogged ; that he had 
landed in New Orleans during a tlmnder-and-rain storm, 
and under other ill omens ; that he claimed to be king of 
the colony ; that he offended the people with evidences of 
sordid avarice ; and that he added to these crimes — as the 
text has it — "many others, equally just [!] and terrible!" 

Kot less unhappy were the adulations offered the king, 
who so justly deserved their detestation. The conspira- 
tors had at first entertained the bold idea of declaring the 
colony's independence and setting up a republic. To this 
end Noyan and his brother Bienville, about three months 
before the outbreak, had gone secretly to Governor El- 
liott, at Pensacola, to treat for the aid of British troops. 
In this they failed ; and, though their lofty resolution, 
which, by wiser leaders, among a people of higher disci- 
pline or under a greater faith in the strength of a just 
cause, might have been communicated to the popular will, 
was not abandoned, it was hidden, and finallv suffocated 
under a pretence of the most ancient and servile loyalty : 
" Great king, the best of kings [Louis XV.], father and 
protector of your subjects, deign, sire, to receive into your 
royal and fraternal bosom the children who have no other 
desire than to die your subjects," etc. 

The bearers of this address were Le Sassier, St. Lette, 
and Milhet. They appeared before the Due de Choiseul 
unsupported ; for the aged Bienville was dead. St. Lette, 



70 THE CIIEOLKS OF LOUISIANA. 

t'liosen because lie liad once been an intimate of the duke, 
was cordially recei\'ed, I]nt the deputation as a body met 
only frowns and the intelligence that the King of Spain, 
earlier informed, was taking steps for a permanent occu- 
pation of the refractory province. St. Lette remained in 
the duke's bosom. Milhet and Le Sassier returned, carry- 
ing with them oidy the cold comfort of an order refund- 
ing the colonial debt at three-fifths of its nominal value, 
in five per cent, bonds. 

It was the fate of the Creoles — possibly a climatic re- 
sult — to be slack-handed and dilatory. Month after 
month followed the October uprising without one of those 
incidents that would have succeeded in the history of an 
earnest people. In March, 1TG9, Foucault covertly de- 
serted his associates, and denounced them, by letter, to 
the French cabinet. In April the Spanish frigate sailed 
from New Orleans. Three intrepid men (Loyola, (^ay- 
arre, and Navarro), the governmental staff which Ulloa 
had left in the province, still remained, unmolested. ]^ot 
a fort was taken, though it is probable not one could have 
withstood assault. Kot a spade was struck into the 
ground, or an obstruction planted, at any strategic point, 
throughout that whole " Creole " spring time which 
stretches in its exuberant perfection from January to 
June. 

At length the project of forming a republic was revived 
and was given definite shape and advocacy. But priceless 
time had been thrown away, the opportune moment had 



THE PEICE OF IIALF-CO]NrVICTIONS. 71 

passed, an overwhelming Spanish array and fleet was 
approaching, and the spirit of tlie people was paralyzed. 
The revolt against the injustice and oppression of two 
royal powers at once, by " the first European colony that 
entertained the idea of proclaiming her independence," 
M-as virtually at an end. 

It was the misfortune of the Creoles to be wanting in 
habits of mature thought and of self-control. They had 
not made that study of reciprocal justice and natural 
rights which becomes men who would resist tyranny. 
They lacked the steady purpose bred of daily toil. With 
these qualities, the insurrection of 1768 might have been 
a revolution for the overthrow of French and Spanish 
misrule and the establishment and maintenance of the 
right of self-government. 

The Creoles were valorous but unreflecting. They had 
the spirit of freedom, but not the profound principles of 
right wdiich it becomes the duty of revolutionists to assert 
and struggle for. They arose fiercely against a confusion 
of real and fancied grievances, sought to be ungoverned 
rather than self-governed, and, following distempered 
leaders, became a warning in their many-sided short-sighted- 
ness, and an example only in their audacious courage. 

They had now only to pay the penalties ; and it was by 
an entire inversion of all their first intentions that they at 
length joined in the struggle which brought to a vigorous 
birth that American nation of which they finally became 
a part. 



XI. 

COUNT O'REILLY AND SPANISH LAWS. 

/~\iS"E morning toward the end of July, ITGO, the peo- 
^■^^ pie of New ( )rleiins were brought suddenly to their 
feet by the news that the Spaniards were at the mouth of 
the river in overwhelming force. There was no longer 
any room to postpone choice of action. 

Marquis, the Swiss captain, with a white cockade in his 
hat (he had been the leading advocate for a republic), and 
Petit, with a pistol in either hand, came out upon the 
ragged, sunburnt grass of the Place d'Armes and called 
upon the people to defend their liberties. About a hun- 
dred men joined tliem ; but the town was struck motion- 
less with dismay ; the few who had gathered soon disap- 
peared, and by the next day the resolution of the leaders 
was distinctly taken, to submit. But no one fled. 

On the second morning Aubry called the people to the 
Place d'Armes, promised the clemency of the illustrious 
Irishman who commanded the approachiiig expedition, 
and sent them away, connnanding them to keep within 
their homes. 

Lafreniere, Marquis, and Milhet descended the river. 



COUNT o'KEILLY AND SPANISH LAWS. 73 

appeared before the coinniander of the Spaniards, and by 
the mouth of Lafreniere in a submissive but brave and 
manly address presented the liomage of the people. The 
captain-general in his reply let fall the word seditious. 
Marquis boldly but respectfully objected. He was ans- 
wered with gracious dignity and the assurance of ultimate 
justice, and the insurgent leaders returned to Xew Or- 
leans and to their liomes. 

The Spanish fleet numbered twenty-four sail. For 
more than three weeks it slowly pushed its way around 
the bends of the Mississippi, and on the 18th of August 
it finally furled its canvas before the town. Aubry drew 
np his French troops with the colonial militia at the bottom 
of the Place d'Armes, a gun was fired from the flagship 
of the fleet, and Don Alexandre O'Reilly, accompanied 
by twenty-six hundred chosen Spanish troops, and with 
fifty pieces of artillery, landed in unprecedented pomp, 
and took formal possession of the province. 

On the 21st, twelve of the principal insurrectionists 
were arrested. Two days later Foucault was also made a 
prisoner. , One other, Braud, the printer of the seditious 
documents, was apprehended, and a proclamation an- 
nounced that no other arrests would be made. Foucault, 
pleading his official capacity, was taken to France, tried 
by his government, and thrown into the Bastile. Braud 
pleaded his obligation as government printer to print all 
public documents, and was set at liberty. Yillere either 
" died raving mad on the day of his arrest," as stated in 



74 TIIK (liKOLES OF LOI'ISIANA. 

tlio Spaiiisli official report, or met his end in the act of 
resisting the gnurd on board the frigate where he liad 
been placed in continenient. Lafr6niere, Noyan, Caresse, 
Marquis, and Joseph ^lilhet were condemned to be 
lianged. The sui)plieations both of colonists and Spanish 
officials saved them only from the gallows, and they fell 
before the iii-e of a tile of Spanish grenadiers. 

The volley made at least one young bride at once an 
orphan and a widow. For the youthful DeKoyan had 
been newly wed to the daughter of J.afreniere. Judge 
Gayarre, in his history of Louisiana, tells, as a tradition, 
that the young chevalier, in prison awaiting execution, 
being told that his attempt to escape would be winked 
at by the cruel captain-general, replied that he would 
live or die with his associates, and so met his untimely 
end. 

Against his young brother, Bienville, no action seems 
to have been taken beyond the sequestration of his prop- 
erty. He assumed the title of his unfortunate brother, 
and as the Chevalier de Xoyan and lieutenant of a ship 
of the line, died at St. Domingo nine years after. But 
Petit, Masan, Doucet, Boisblanc, Jean Milhet, and Pou- 
pet were consigned to the Morro Castle, Havana, where 
they remained a year, and M'ere then set at liberty, but 
were forbidden to return to Louisiana and were deprived 
of their property. About the same time Foucault was re- 
leased from the Bastile. The declaration of the Superior 
Council was burned on the same Place d'Armes that had 



COUNT O EEILLY AND SPANISH LAWS. 



75 



seen it first proclaimed. Aubry refused a liigli cominis- 
sion in the Spanish army, departed for France, and had 
ah-eady entered the River Garonne, wlien he was ship- 
wrecked and lost. " Cruel O'Reilly " — the captain-gen- 
eral was justly named. 




" Cruel O'Reilly." (From a miniature in possession of Hon. Charles Gayarre, of Louisiana.) 

There could, of course, be but one fate for the Superior 
Council as an official body, and the Count O'Reilly, 
armed with plenary powers, swept it out of existence. 
The ccibildo took its place. This change from French 
rule to Spanish lay not principally in the laws, but in the 
redistribution of power. The crown, the sword, and the 



7C THE CUKOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

cross absorbed tbe lion's sbare, leaving but a morsel to be 
doled out, with much form and pump, to the cah'ddo. 
A'ery (piaint and redolent witli Spanish romance was this 
body, which fur the third j)art of a century ruled the 
pettier destinies of the Louisiana Creoles. Therein sat 
the six n'(/i'(lors, or rulers, whose seats, bought at first at 
auction, were sold from successor to successor, the crown 
always coming in for its share of the price. Five of 
them were loaded down with ponderous titles; the alferez 
real or royal standard bearer ; the alcalih-maijor-jyrovin- 
cial, who overtook and tried offenders escaped beyond 
town limits ; the alyuazil-tnayor, with his eye on police 
and prisons ; the depositario-general, who kept and dis- 
pensed tlie public stores ; and the recihidoi' de 2)enas de 
cdmara, the receiver of fines and penalties. Above these 
si-K sat four whom tlie six, annually passing out of office, 
elected to sit over their six successors. These four must 
be residents and householders of Kew Orleans. Xo of- 
ficer or attache of the financial department of the realm, 
nor any bondsman of such, nor any one aged under 
twenty-six, nor any new convert to the Catholic faith, 
could qualify. Two were alcaldes ordinarios, common 
judges. In addition to other duties, they held petty 
courts at evening in their own dwellings, and gave nn- 
written decisions ; but the soldier and the priest were be- 
yond their jurisdiction. A third was sindico-jyrociirador- 
general, and sued for town revenues ; and the fourth was 
town treasurer, the mayor-domo-de-jpro^rios. At the bot- 



COUNT o'KEILLY AND SPANISH LAWS. 77 

torn of the scale was the escrihmio, or secretary, and at 
the top, the governor. 

It was like a crane, — all feathers. A sample of its 
powers was its right to sell and revoke at will the meat 
monopoly and the many other petty mnnicipal privileges 
which characterized the Spanish rnle and have been 
handed down to the present day in the city's offensive 
license system. The underlying design of the cabildo's 
creation seems to have been not to confer, but to scatter 
and neutralize power in the hands of royal sub-ofl5cials 
and this body. Loaded with titles and fettered with 
minute ministerial duties, it was, so to speak, the Superior 
Council shorn of its locks ; or if not, then, at least, a body 
whose members recognized their standing as fjuardians of 
the people and servants of the king. 

O'Reilly had come to set up a government, but not to 
remain and govern. On organizing the cabildo, he an- 
nounced the appointment of Don Louis de Unzaga, colonel 
of the regiment of Havana, as governor of the province, 
and yielded him the chair. But under his own higher 
commission of captain -general he continued for a time in 
control. He had established in force the laws of Castile 
and the Indies and the use of the Spanish tongue in the 
courts and the public offices. Those who examine the 
dusty notarial records of that day find the baptismal 
names, of French and Anglo-Saxon origin, changed to a 
Spanish orthography, and the indices made upon these in- 
stead of upon the surnames. 



78 tup: Creoles of Louisiana. 

So, if laws and i^oveninient eoukl have done it, Loui- 
siana would have been made Spanish. But the change in 
the laws was not violent. There was a tone of severity 
and a feature of arbitrary surveillance in those of Spain ; 
but the principles of the French and Spanish systems had 
a common origin. One remotely, the other almost di- 
rectly, was from the Homan Code, and they were point- 
edly simjlar in the matters Mhich seemed, to the Creole, 
of supreme importance, — the nuxrital relation, and inheri- 
tance. But it was not long before he found that now 
under the Spaniard, as, earlier, under the French, the 
laws themselves, and their administration, pointed in very 
different directions. Spanish ride in Louisiana was better, 
at least, than French, which, it is true, scarcely deserved 
the name of government. As to the laws themselves, it 
is worthy of notice that Louisiana " is at this time the 
only State, of the vast territories acquired from France, 
Sj^ain, and Mexico, in which the civil law has been re- 
tained, and forms a large portion of its jurisprudence." 

On the 29th of October, 1770, O'lteilly sailed from 
Xew Orleans with most of his troops, leaving the Spanish 
power entirely and peacefully established. The force left 
by him in the colony amounted to one thousand two hun- 
dred men. lie had dealt a sudden and terrible blow; but 
lie had followed it only with velvet strokes. His sugges- 
tions to the home government of commercial measures 
advantageous to Kew Orleans and the colony, were 
many, and his departure was the signal for the com- 



COUNT O'REILLY AND SPANISH LAWS. 79 

mencement of active measures intended to induce, if 
possible, a change in tlie sentiments of the people,— one 
consonant with the political changes he ' had forced 
upon them. Such was the kindlier task of the wise and 



mild Unzaga 



XII. 

SPANISH CONCILIATION. 

/^ROZ AT— Law-Louis XV.— Charles IIL— wlioever 
at one time or another was tlie transatlantic master 
of Louisiana managed its affairs on the same bad prin- 
ciple : To none of them had a colony any inherent rights. 
They entered into possession as cattle are let into a pas- 
ture or break into a field. It was simply a commercial 
venture projected in the interests of the sovereign's or 
monopolist's revenues, and restrictions were laid or indul- 
gences bestowed upon it merely as those interests seemed 
to require. And so the Mississippi Delta, until better 
ideas could prevail, could not show other than a gaunt, 
ill-nourished civilization. The weight of oppression, if 
the governors and other officers on the spot had not 
evaded the letter of the royal decrees and taught the 
Creoles to do the same, would actually have crushed the 
life out of the province. 

The merchants of Xew Orleans, when Unzaga took the 
governor's chair, dared not import from France anything 
but what the customs authorities chose to consider articles 
of necessity. AVith St. Domingo and Martinique they 



SPANISH CONCILIATION. 81 

could only exchange lumber and grain for breadstuffs and 
wine. Their ships must be passported ; their bills of 
lading were offensively policed ; and these " privileges " 
were only to last until Spain could supplant them by a 
commerce exclusively her own. They were completely 
shut out from every other market in the world except 
certain specified ports of Spain, where, they complained, 
they could not sell their produce to advantage nor buy 
what was wanted in the province. They could employ 
only Spanish bottoms commanded by subjects of Spain ; 
these could not put into even a Spanish- American inter- 
mediate port except in distress, and then only under oner- 
ous restrictions. They were virtually throttled merely by 
a rigid application of the theory which had always op- 
pressed them, and only by the loose and flexible adminis- 
tration of which the colony and town had survived and 
grown, while Anthony Crozat had become bankrupt. 
Law's Compagnie d'Occident had been driven to other 
fields of enterprise, and Louis XV. had heaped up a loss 
of millions more than he could pay. 

Ulloa's banishment left a gate wide open which a kind 
of cattle not of the Spanish brand lost no time in enter- 
ing. 

"I found the English," wrote O'Reilly, in October, 
1769, " in complete possession of the commerce of the 
colony. They had in this town their merchants and 
traders, with open stores and shops, and I can safely as- 
sert that they pocketed nine-tenths of the money spent 



82 THE ciip:oli:s of Louisiana. 

liere. ... 1 drove off all the English traders and 
the other individuals of that nation whom I found in this 
town, and J shall admit here none of their vessels." l>ut 
lie recommended what may liave seemed to him a liberal 
measure, — an entirely free trade with Spain and Havana, 
and named the wants of the people : " Hour, wine, oil, 
iron instruments, arms, amnnmition, and every sort of 
manufactured goods for clothing and other domestic pur- 
poses," for which tliey could pay in "timber, indigo, cot- 
ton, furs, and a small quantity of corn and rice." 

Unzaga, a man of advanced years and a Spaniard of 
the indulgent type, when in 1770 he assumed control, saw 
the colony's extremity, and began at once the old policy 
of meeting desirable ends by lamentable expedients. His 
method was double-acting. He procured, on the one 
hand, repeated concessions and indulgences from the 
king, while on the other he overlooked the evasion by the 
people of such burdens as the government had not lifted. 
The Creoles on the plantations took advantage of this 
state of affairs. Under cover of trading with the British 
posts on the eastern bank of the Mississippi above Orleans 
Island, the English traders returned and began again to 
supply the Creole planters with goods and slaves. Busi- 
ness became brisk, for anything offered in exchange was 
acceptable, revenue laws were mentioned only in jest, 
profits were large, and credit was free and long. Against 
the river bank, M'here now stands the suburb of Gretna, 
lay moored (when they were not trading up and down the 



SPANISH CONCILIATION. 8S 

shores of the stream) two large floating warehouses, fitted 
up with counters and shelves and stocked with assorted 
merchandise. The merchants, shut out from these con- 
traband benefits, complained loudly to Unzaga. But they 
complained in vain. The trade went on, the planters 
prospered ; the merchants gave them crop-advances, and 
they turned about and, ignoring their debt, broadened 
their lands and bought additional slaves from the British 
traders. Hereupon Unzaga moved, and drawing upon his 
large reserve of absolute power, gently but firmly checked 
this imposition. 

The governor's quiet rule worked another benefit. 
While the town was languishing under the infliction of 
so-called concessions that were so narrowed by provisos as 
to be almost neutralized, a new oppression showed itself. 
The newly imported Spanish Capuchins opened such a 
crusade, not only against their French brethren, but also 
against certain customs which these had long allowed 
among the laity, that but for Unzaga's pacific intervention 
an exodus would have followed which he feared might 
even have destroyed the colony. 

The province could not bear two, and there had already 
been one. Under O'Reilly so many merchants and me- 
chanics had gone to St. Domingo that just before he left 
he had ceased to grant passports. Their places were not 
filled, and in 1773 Unzaga wrote to the Bishop of Cuba 
that, " There were not in Xew Orleans and its environs 
two thousand souls (possibly meaning whites) of all pro- 



84 TIIK CKEOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

fessions and conditions," and that most of these were ex- 
tremely poor. 

But conciliation soon be^^an to take effect. Commis- 
sions were eagerly taken in tlie governor's " regiment of 
Louisiana," where the pay was large and the sword was 
the true emblem of power, and the offices of rey'ulor and 
alcalde were by-and-by occupied by the bearers of such 
ancient Creole names as St. Denis, La Chaise, Fleurieu, 
Forstall, Duplessis, Bienvenue, Dufossat, and Livaudais. 

In ITTG, Unzaga was made captain-gcnei-al of Caracas, 
and the following year, left in charge of Don Bei'nardo 
de Galvez, then about twenty-one j-ears of age, a people 
still French in feeling, it is true, yet reconciled in a 
measure to Spanish rule. 



XIII. 

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION ON THE GULF SIDE. 

"^TOW, at length, the Creole and the Anglo-American 
were to come into active relation to each other — a 
relation which, from that day to the present, has qualified 
every public question in Louisiana. 

At a happy moment the governorship of Unzaga, a man 
advanced in life, of impaired vision and failing health, 
who was begging to be put on the retired list, gave place 
to the virile administration of one of the most brilliant 
characters to be seen in the history of the Southwestern 
United States. Galvez was the son of the Viceroy of 
Mexico and nephew of the Spanish secretary of state, 
who was also president of the council of the Indies. He 
was barely grown to manhood, but he was ardent, engag- 
ing, brave, fond of achievement and display, and, withal, 
talented and sagacious. Says one who fought under him, 
" He was distinguished for the affability of his manners, 
the sweetness of his temper, the frankness of his charac- 
ter, the kindness of his heart, and his love of justice." 

A change now took place, following the drift of affairs 
in Europe. The French, instead of the English, mer- 



86 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIAT^A. 

chants, coimuandcd the trade of tlie ]\Iissisi«ippi. The 
Britisli traders found tlicinselves suddenly treated with 
great rigor. Eleven of their ships, richly laden, -were 
seized by the new governor, while he exceeded the letter 
of the Franco-Spanish treaty in bestowing privileges upon 
the French. iS'ew liberties gave fresh value to the trade 
with French and Spanish- American ports. Slaves were 
not allowed to be brought thence, owing to their insurrec- 
tionary spirit ; but their importation direct from Guinea 
was now specially encouraged, and presently the prohibi- 
tion asainst those of the West Indies was removed. 

Galvez was, as yet, only governor ad interim • yet, by 
his own proclamation, he gave the colonists the right to 
trade with France, and, a few days later, included the 
ports of the thirteen British colonies then waging that 
war in which the future of the Creoles was so profound- 
ly, though obscurely, involved. Xew liberties were also 
given to traders with Spain ; the government became the 
buyer of the tobacco crop, and a French and French- West 
Indian immigration was encouraged. 

But these privileges were darkly overshadowed by the 
clouds of war. The English issued letters of marque 
against Spanish commerce, and the French took open 
part in the American revolution. The young governor 
was looking to his defences, building gun-boats, and 
awaiting from his king the word which would enable liim 
to test his military talents. 

Out of these very conditions, so disappointing in one 



THE AMERICAN KEVOLUTION ON THE GULF SIDE. 87 

direction, sprang a new trade, of tlie greatest possible 
significance in the history of the people. Some eight 
years before, at the moment when the arrival of two 
thousand six hundred Spanish troops and the non-appear- 
ance of their supply-ships had driven the price of pro- 
visions in Kew Orleans almost to famine rates, a brig 
entered port, from Baltimore, loaded with flour. The 
owner of the cargo was one Oliver Pollock. He offered 
to sell it to O'Reilly on the captain-general's own terms, 
and finally disposed of it to him at fifteen dollars a bar- 
rel, two-thirds the current price. O'Reilly rewarded his 
liberality with a grant of free trade to Louisiana for his 
life-time. Such was the germ of the commerce of New- 
Orleans with the great ports of the Atlantic. In 1Y76, 
Pollock, with a number of other merchants from New 
York, Philadelphia, and Boston, who had established 
themselves in New Orleans, had begun, with the counte- 
nance of Galvez, to supply, by fleets of large canoes, arms 
and ammunition to the American agents at Fort Pitt 
(Pittsburg). This was repeated in 1777, and, in 1778, 
Pollock became the avowed agent of the American Gov- 
ernment. 

Here, then, was a great turning-point. Immigration 
became Anglo-Saxon, a valuable increase of population 
taking place by an inflow from the Floridas and the 
United States, that settled in the town itself and took the 
oath of allegiance to Spain. The commercial acquaint- 
ance made a few years before with the Atlantic ports was 



88 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

HOW extended to the growing Wtjst, and to be cut off 
from European sources of supply was no longer a calamity, 
but a lesson of that frugality and self-help in the domestic 
life which are the secret of public wealth. Between St. 
Louis and iS'ew Orleans, xsatchitoches and Xatchez (Fort 
Pannnire), there was sufficient diversity of products and 
industries to complete the circuit of an internal com- 
merce ; the Attakapas and Opelousas prairies had been 
settled by Acadian herdsmen ; in ITTS, immigrants from 
the Canary Islands had founded the settlement of Vene- 
zuela on La Fourche, Galveztown on the Amite, and that 
of Terre aux Bceufs just below New Orleans. A ])a])er 
currency supplied the sometimes urgent call fo^* a circu- 
lating medium, and the colonial ti-easury warrants, or lih- 
eranzas, were redeemed by receipts of specie from Vera 
Cruz often enough to keep them afloat at a moderately 
fair market value. 

Were the Ci-eoles satisfied ? This question was now to 
be practically tested. For in the summer of 1779 Spain 
declared war against Great Britain. Galvez discovered 
that the British were planning the surprise of Xew Or- 
leans. Under cover of preparations for defence he made 
•haste to take the offensive. Only four days before the 
time when he had appointed to move, a hurricane struck 
the town, demolishing many houses, ruining crops and 
dwellings up and down the river " coast," and sinking his 
gun riutilla. Xothing dismayed, the young connnander 
called the people to their old rallying ground on the 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIOIS' ON THE GULF SIDE. 89 

Place d'Armes, and with a newly received commission in 
one hand confirming him as governor, and his drawn 
sword in the other, demanded of them to answer his chal- 
lenge : " Should he appear before the cabildo as that 
commission required, and take the oath of governor? 
Should he swear to defend Louisiana ? Would they stand 
by him ? " The response was enthusiastic. Then, said 
he, " Let them that love me follow where I lead," and the 
Creoles flocked around him ready for his behest. Re- 
pairing his disasters as best he could, and hastening his 
ostensibly defensive preparations, he marched, on the 
22d of August, 1779, against the British forts on the Mis- 
sissippi. Llis force, besides the four Spanish officers who 
ranked in turn below him, consisted of one hundred and 
seventy regulars, three hundred and thirty recruits, 
twenty carbineers, sixty militia men, eighty free men-of- 
color, six hundred men from the coast (" of every condi- 
tion and color "), one hundred and sixty Indians, nine 
American volunteers, and Oliver Pollock. This little 
army of 1,430 men was without tents or other military 
furniture, or a single engineer. The gun fleet followed in 
the river abreast of their line of march, carrying one 
twenty-four, five eighteen, and four four-pounders. On 
the 7tli of September Fort Bute on Bayou Manchac, watli 
its garrison of twenty men, yielded easily to the first as- 
sault of the unsupported Creole militia. The fort of 
Baton Rouge was found to be very strong, armed with 
thirteen heavy guns, and garrisoned by five hundred men. 



90 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

The troops Legged to be led to the assault ; l)ut Galvez 
landed his heavy artillery, erected batteries, and on the 
21st of September, after an engagement of ten hours, re- 
duced the fort. Its capitulation included the surrender of 
Fort Panmure, with its garrison of eighty grenadiers, a 
place that by its position would have been very difficult 
of assault. The Spanish gun-boats captured in the Mis- 
sissippi and Manchac four schooners, a brig, and two cut- 
ters. On lake Pontchartrain an American schooner fitted 
out at I^ew Orleans captured an English privateer. A 
party of fourteen Creoles surprised an English cutter in 
the narrow waters of Bayou Manchac, and rusliing on 
board after their first fire, and fastening down the 
hatches, captured the vessel and her crew of seventy men. 
The Creole militia won the generous praise of their com- 
mander for discipline, fortitude and ardor ; the Acadians 
showed an impetuous fury : while the Indians presented 
the remarkable spectacle of harming no fugitives, and of 
bearing in their arms to Galvez, uninjured, children who 
with their mothers had hid themselves in the woods. 

In the following February, reenforced from Havana, 
and commanding the devotion of his Creole militia, Gal- 
vez set sail down the Mississippi, with two thousand men, 
— regulars, Creoles, and free blacks — and issued from 
that mouth of the river known as the Balize or Pass d 
I'Outre, intending to attack Fort Charlotte, on the Mobile 
River. His fleet narrowly escaped total destruction, and 
his landing on the eastern shore of Mobile River was at- 



THE AMEKICAlSr KEVOLUTION ON THE GULF SIDE. 91 

tended with so much confusion and embarrassment that 
for a moment he contemplated a precipitate retreat in the 
event of a British advance from Pensacola. But the 
British for some reason M'ere not prompt, and Galvez 
pushed forward to Fort Charlotte, erected six batteries, 
and engaged the fort, which surrendered on the 14th of 
March, to avoid being stormed. A few days later, the 
English arrived from Pensacola in numbers sufficient to 
have raised the siege, but with no choice then but to re- 
turn whence thej had come. Galvez, at that time twenty- 
four years of age, was rewarded for this achievement with 
the rank of major-general. 

lie now conceived the project of taking Pensacola. 
But this was an enterprise of altogether another magni- 
tude. Failing to secure reenforcements from Havana by 
writing for them, he sailed to that place in October, 1780, 
to make his application in person, intending, if successful, 
to move thence directly upon the enemy. Delays and 
disappointments could not baffle him, and early in March, 
1781, he appeared before Pensacola with a ship of the 
line, two frigates, and transports containing fourteen hun- 
dred soldiers, well furnished with artillery and ammuni- 
tion. On the 16th and 17th, such troops as could be 
spared from Mobile, and Don Estevan Miro from New 
Orleans, with the Louisiana forces, arrived at the western 
bank of the Perdido River ; and on the afternoon of the 
18th, though unsupported by the fleet until dishonor was 
staring its jealous commander in the face, Galvez moved 



92 THE ruEOLKs of Louisiana. 

under hot fire, through a passage of great peril, and took 
lip a besieging position. 

The investing lines of Galvez and Miro began at once 
to contract. Early in April, their batteries and those of 
the fleet opened fire from every side. But the return 
fire of the English, from a battery erected mider their 
fort, beat off the fleet, and as week after week wore on it 
began to appear that the siege might be unsuccessful. 
However, in the early part of May, a shell from the 
Spaniards having exploded a magazine in one of the Eng- 
lish redoubts, the troops from Mobile pressed quickly for- 
ward and occupied the ruin, and Galvez was preparing to 
storm the main fort, when the English raised the white 
flag. Thus, on the 9th of May, ITSl, Pensacola, with a 
garrison of eight hundred men, and the whole of West 
Florida, was surrendered to Galvez. Louisiana had here- 
tofore been" included under one domination with Cuba ; 
but now one of tlie several rewards bestowed upon her 
governor was the captain-generalship of Louisiana and 
"West Florida. He, however, sailed from St. Domingo to 
take part in an expedition against the Bahamas, leaving 
Colonel Miro to govern ad intei^im, and never resumed 
the governor's chair in Louisiana. In 1TS5, the captain- 
generalship of Cuba was given him in addition, and later 
in the same year, he laid down these offices to succeed his 
father, at his death, as Viceroy of Mexico. He ruled in this 
oflice with great credit, as well as splendor, and died sud- 
denly, in his thirty-eighth year, from the fatigues of a hunt. 



THE AMERICAN EEVOLUTIOX ON THE GULF SIDE. 93 

Such is a brief summarj — too brief for full justice — of 
tlie achievements of the Creoles under a gallant Spanish 
soldier in aid of the ^va.v for American independence. 
Undoubtedly the motive of Spain was more conspicuous- 
ly and exclusively selfish than the aid furnished by the 
French ; yet a greater credit is due than is popularly ac- 
corded to the help afforded in the brilliant exploits of 
Galvez, discouraged at first by a timid cabildo, but sup- 
ported initially, finally, and in the beginning mainly, by 
the Creoles of the Mississippi Delta. The fact is equally 
true, though much overlooked even in Xew Orleans, that 
while Andrew Jackson was yet a child the city of the 
Creoles had a deliverer from British conquest in Bern- 
ardo de Galvez, by whom the way was kept open for the 
United States to stretch to the Gulf and to the Pacific. 



XIV. 

SPANISH NEW ORLEANS. 

"TN that city you may go and stand to-day on the spot — 
still as antique and quaint as the Creole mind and 
heart which cherish it, — where gathered in 1705 the 
motley throng of townsmen and planters whose bold re- 
pudiation of their barter to the King of Spain we have 
just reviewed ; where in 1768 Lafreniere harangued them, 
and they, few in number and straitened in purse but not 
in daring, rallied in arms against Spain's indolent show of 
authority and drove it into the Gulf. They were the first 
people in America to make open war distinctly for the 
expulsion of European rule. But it was nut by this epi- 
sode — it was not in the wearing of the white cockade — 
that the Creoles were to become an independent republic 
under British. protection, or an American State. 

"We have seen them in the following year overawed by 
the heavy hand of Spain, and bowing to her yoke. We 
have seen them ten years later, under her banner and led 
by the chivah'ous Galvez, at INfanchac, at Baton Bouge, at 
Mobile, and at PensacoLa, strike victoriously and " wiser 
than they knew " for the discomfiture of British power in 



SPANISH NEW ORLEANS. 



95 



America and the promotion of American independence 
and unity. But neither was this to bring them into the 
union of free States. For when the United States became 
a nation the Spanish ensign still floated from the flag-staff 
in tlie Plaza de Armas where " Cruel O'Keilly " had hoisted 
it, and at whose base the colonial council's declaration of 
rights and wrongs had been burned. There was much more 
to pass through, many events and conditions, before the 







hand of Louisiana should be unclasped from the hold of 
distant powers and placed in that of the American States. 
Through all, Xew Orleans continued to be the key of 
the land and river and of all questions concerning them. 
A glance around the old square, a walk into any of the 
streets that run from it north, east, or south, shows the 
dark imprint of the hand that held the town and province 
until neither arms, nor guile, nor counterplots, nor bribes, 
could hold them back from a destiny that seemed the- ap- 
pointment of nature. 



96 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

For a wliilc, under Unzaga and Galvez, the frail wooden 
town of thirty-two hundred souls, that had been the cap- 
ital under French domination, showed bat little change. 
]]ut 1783 brought peace. It brought also Miro's able ad- 
ministration, new trade, new courage, " forty vessels [in 
the river] at the same time," and, by 1788, an increase in 
number to tifty-three hundred. In the same year came 
the great purger of towns — fire. 

Don Vicente Jose Kunez, the military treasurer, lived 
in Chartres Street, near St. Louis, and had a ])rivate 
chapel. On Good Friday, the 21st of March, the wind 
was very high and from the south, and, either from a fall- 
ing candle of the altar, or from some other accident or 
inadvertence, not the first or the worst fire kindled by 
Spanish piety flared up and began to devour the in- 
flammable town. The people were helpless to stop it. 
The best of the residences, all the wholesale stores, fell 
before it. It swept around the north of the plaza, broad- 
ening at every step. The town hall, the arsenal, the 
jail — the inmates of which were barely rescued alive 
— the parish church, the quarters of the Capuchins, dis- 
appeared. In the morning the plaza and the levee 
were white with tents, and in the smoldering path of 
the fire, the naked chimneys of eight hundred and fifty- 
six fallen roofs stood as its monuments. The buildings 
along the immediate river-front still remained ; but 
nearly half the town, including its entire central part, lay 
in ashes. 



SPANISH NEW ORLEANS. 99 

Another Spaniard's name stands as the exponent of 
a miniature renaissance. Don Andreas Almonaster y 
Roxas was the royal notary and alferez real. As far back 
as 1770 the original government reservations on either 
side the plaza had been granted the town to be a source 
of perpetual revenue by ground-rents. Almonaster be- 
came their perpetual lessee, the old barracks came down, 
and two rows of stores, built of brick between wooden 
pillars, of two and a half stories height, with broad, tiled 
roofs and dormer windows and bright Spanish awnings, 
became, and long continued to be the fashionable retail 
quarter of the town. 

Just outside the " Rampart," near St. Peter Street, the 
hurricane of 1779 — Galvez's hurricane, as we may say — 
had blown down the frail charity hospital which the few 
thousand livres of Jean Louis, a dying sailor, had founded 
in 1737. In 1784-8G Almonaster replaced it with a brick 
edifice costing $114,000. It was the same institution 
that is now located in Common Street, the pride of the 
city and State. 

In 1787 he built of stuccoed brick, adjoining their con- 
vent, the well-remembered, quaint, and homely chapel of 
the Ursulines. And now, to repair the ravages of fire, he 
in 1792 began, and in two years completed sufficiently for 
occupation, the St. Louis Cathedral, on the site of the 
burned parish church. Louisiana and Florida had just 
become a bishopric separate from Havana. All these 
works had been at his own charge. Later, by contract, 



100 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

he filled the void made by the burning of the town hall — 
which had stood on the south side of the church, facing 
the plaza — erecting in its place the hall of the cabildo, the 
same that stands there still, made more outlandish, but 
not more beautiful, by the addition of a French roof. 
The Capuchins, on the other side of the church, had 
already replaced their presbytery by the building that 
now serves as a court-house. The town erected, on the 
river-front just below the plaza, a halle ties houeheries — 
the " old French market."' But, except for these two 
structures, to the hand of the old alferez real, or royal 
standard-bearer, belongs the fame of having thrown 
together around the most classic spot in the Mississippi 
Valley, the most picturesque group of fa9ades, roofs, and 
spires in picturesque New Orleans. 

But fate made room again for improvement. On the 
Sth of December, ITQi — the wind was this time from the 
north — some children, playing in a court in Roy ale Street, 
too near an adjoining hay-store, set fire to the hay. Gov- 
ernor Carondelet — Colonel Fran9ois Louis Hector, Baron 
de Carondelet, a short, plump, choleric Fleming of strong 
business qualities, in 1792, when he succeeded Miro, had 
provided, as he thought, against this contingency. But, 
despite his four alcaldes de harrio, with their fire-engines 
and firemen and axmen, the fire spread ; and in three 
hours — for the houses were mere tinder — again burned 
out of the heart of the town two hundred and twelve 
.stores and dwellings. The new buildings at the bottom 







■' Gratings, balconies, and lime-washed stucco." 



SPANISH NEW ORLEANS. 103 

of the plaza escaped ; but the loss was greater than that 
of six years before, Avhich M'as nearl}' $2,600,000. Only 
two stores were left standing ; the levee and the square 
again became the camping-ground of hundreds of inhab- 
itants, and the destruction of provisions threatened a 
famine. 

So shingles and thatch and cypress boards had cost 
enough. From this time the tile roof came into general 
use. As the town's central parts filled up again, it was 
with better structures, displaying many Spanish- American 
features — adobe or brick walls, arcades, inner courts, pon- 
derous doors and windows, heavy iron bolts and gratings 
(for houses began to be worth breaking into), balconies, 
portes-cocheres, and white and yellow lime-washed stucco, 
soon stained a hundred colors by sun and rain. Two-story 
dwellings took the place of one-story, and the general ap- 
pearance, as well as public safety, was enhanced. 

The people were busy, too, in the miry, foul-smelling 
streets, on the slippery side-walks and on the tree-planted 
levee. Little by little the home government, at the inter- 
cession of the governors — old Unzaga, young Galvez, the 
suave and energetic Miro — had relaxed its death-grip. 
A little wooden custom-house, very promptly erected at 
the upper front corner of the town, had fallen into signifi- 
cant dilapidation, though it was not yet such a sieve but 
it could catch an export and import duty of six per cent. 
on all merchandise that did not go round it. The conces- 
sions of 1778, neutralized by war and by English block- 



104 TIIK CKEOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

ade, had been revived, enlarged, ;uul extended ten years. 
Moored against the grassy bank of the brinnning liver, 
the bhick ships were taking in hides and furs, bales of 
cotton, staves, and skins of indigo for the Spanish market, 
box-shooks for the West Indian sugar-makers, and to- 
bacco, bought by the Ciovernment ; and wore letting out 
over their sides maehineiy and utensils, the red wines of 
Catalonia, and every product of the manufacturer, — be- 
sides negro men and women, girls and boys, for sale 
singly or in lots on the landing. 

On the other side of the town, also, there was, by and 
by, no little activity. A lake and bayou business was 
asking roon), and a question of sanitation was demanding 
attention, and in 1704-90 the practical Carondelet gath- 
ered a large force of slaves, borrowed from their town 
and country owners, and dug with pick and shovel in the 
reeking black soil just beyond the rear fortifications of 
the town, the "Old Basin" and canal that still bear his 
name. The canal joined the Bayou St. John, and thus 
connected ten thousand square yards of artificial harbor 
with Lake Pontchartrain and the sea-coast beyond. , The 
lands contiguous to this basin and canal were covered with 
noisome pools, the source of putrid fevers, and, some 
years later, as Carondelet had urged from the first, the 
cabildo divided them into garden lots and let them out 
at low ground-i'cnts to those who would destroy their in- 
salubrity by ditching and draining them into the canal. 
They began soon to be built on, and have long been en- 



SPANISH NEW ORLEANS. 107 

tirely settled up ; but their drainage can hardly be con- 
sidered to have been thorough and final, as, during an in- 
undation eighty years afterward, the present writer passed 
through its streets in a skiff, with the water as high as 
the gate-knobs. 

By such measures it was that the Spanish king sought 
" to secure to his vassals the utmost felicity.'' This was 
much more than the possession of Louisiana afforded the 
king. The treaty of peace, signed in 1783 by Great 
Britain, the United States, France, and Spain, had made 
the new American power his rival. The western bound- 
ary of the States was fixed on the Mississippi from the 
great lakes to a point nearly opposite the mouth of Ked 
River, and the fortified points along that line, which had 
fallen so short a time before into the hands of Galvez, 
■were required to be yielded up. Such was the first en- 
croachment of American upon Spanish power in the great 
basin. 

Another influence tending to turn the scales in favor of 
the States was a change in the agricultural products of the 
Delta, giving to the commerce of New Orleans a new 
value for the settlers of the "West and the merchants of 
the Atlantic seaports. 



XV. 

HOW BORE MADE SUGAR. 

n^IlE planters of the Delta, on their transfer to Span- 
ish domination, saw indigo, the chief product of 
their lands, shut out of market. French protection was 
lost and French ports were closed to them. Those of 
Spain received them only into ruinous com]>etition with 
the better article made in the older and more southern 
Spanish colonies. By and by kinder commercial regula- 
tions offered a certain relief ; but then new drawbacks 
began to beset them. Season after season was unfavor- 
able, and at length an insect appeared which, by the years 
1793-04, was making such ravages that the planters were 
in despair. If they could not make indigo they knew not 
what to do for a livelihood. 

They had tried myrtle-wax and silk, and had long ago 
given them up. Everybody made a little tobacco, but the 
conditions were not favorable for a large crop in the 
Delta. Cotton their grandfathers had known since 1713. 
The soil and climate above Orleans Island suited it, and it 
had always been raised in moderate quantity. M. De- 
breuil, a wealthy townsman of New Orleans and a laud- 



HOW BORE MADE SUGAR. 109 

holder, a leading mind among the people, had invented a 
cotton-o'in effective enouorh to induce a decided increase 
in the amount of cotton raised in the colony. Yet a still 
better mode of ginning the staple from the seed was 
needed to give the product a decided commercial value. 
There was some anticipation of its possible importance, 
and certain ones who gave the matter thought had, in 
1760, recommended the importation of such apparatus as 
could be found in India. In ITGS cotton had become an 
article of export from Xew Orleans, and in the manifesto 
with M'hich the insurgents banished Ulloa it is mentioned 
as a product whose culture, " improved by experience, 
promised the planter the recompense of his toils." 

At the time of the collapse in the indigo production, 
the Creoles were still experimenting M'ith cotton ; but the 
fame of Eli Whitney's newly invented cotton-gin had 
probably not reached them. There must have been few 
of them, indeed, who supposed that eight years later the 
cotton crop of Louisiana and export from 'New Orleans 
would be respectively 20,000 and 31,000 300-pound bales. 
They turned for a time in another direction. The lower 
Delta was a little too far south for cotton as a sure crop. 
They would try once more, as their fathers had tried, to 
make merchantable sugar. 

On a portion of the city's present wholesale business 
district, near Tchoupitoulas Street, this great staple had 
been first planted in Louisiana by the Jesuit fathers in 
1751. They had received their seed, or rather layers. 



110 TIIK (^lUOOI.KS OF LoriSIAXA. 

from St. Domingo. It liad been grown in the town's 
vicinity ever since, but there only, and in trivial quantity. 
Nothing more than syrup, if even so much, was made 
from it until in 1758 M. Debreuil, the same who had ex- 
])erimented with cotton, built a sugar-mill on his planta- 
tion — now that part of the third district adjoining the 
second, on the river-front — and endeavored to turn a 
large crop of cane into sugar. 

Accounts of the result vary. Sugar, it seems, however, 
was made, and for a time the industry grew. J hit the 
sugar was not of a sort to ship to the world's markets ; it 
was poorly granulated and very wet, and for several years 
was consumed within the province. In 17G5 the effort 
was at length made to export it to France ; but half the 
lirst cargo leaked out of the packages before the vessel 
could make port. 

Then came the cession to Spain, and with it paralysis. 
The half-developed industry collapsed. Ihit in 1791 the 
blacks of St. Domingo rose in rebellion. Refugees liew 
in every direction. A few found their way to Louisiana. 
They had been prosperous sugar-makers, and presently 
the efforts that had ceased for twenty-five years came 
again to life. Two Spaniards, Mendez and Solis, in that 
year erected on the confines of New Orleans, the one a 
distillery and the other a battery of sugar-kettles, and 
manufactured rum and syrup. 

Still the Creoles, every year less able than the year be- 
fore to make rash experiments, struggled against the mis- 



HOW ]?OKE MADE SUGAR. 



Ill 



fortunes that multiplied around the cultivation of indigo, 
until 1794 found them without hope. 

At this juncture appeared Etienne de Bore. He was a 
man of fifty -four, a Creole of the Illinois district, but of a 




distinguished l^orman family ; he liad lived in France 
from the age of four to thirty-two, had served with the 
king's mousquetwires, had married a lady whose estate was 
in Louisiana near New Orleans, and returning with her 



112 THE niKOLKS OF LOUISIANA. 

til tlie province, had becuiue an iiulii;-(» jilanter. The 
Year ITOi foimd liini iace to face with ruin. His father- 
in-law, Destrehan, had in former years been one of tlie 
hist to abandon sugar culture. His wiie and friends 
Marned him against the resolution he was taking ; but he 
persisted in liis determination to abandon indigo, and risk 
all that was left to him on the chance of a success which, 
if achieved, would insure deliverance and fortune to hi)n- 
self and the connuunity. He bought a quantity of canes 
from Mendez and ISolis, planted on the land where the 
Seventh District (late C'arrollton) now stands, and while 
his ci-op was growing erected a mill, and prepared liiniself 
for the momentous season of " grinding." 

His fellow-planters looked on with the liveliest — not 
always with the most hopeful — interest, and at length 
they gathered about liini to see the issue of the experi- 
ment in which only he could be more deeply concerned 
than they. In the whole picturesque history of the Loui- 
siana Creoles few scenes offer so striking a subject for the 
painter as that afforded in this episode : The dark sugar- 
house ; the battery of huge caldrons, with their yellow 
juice boiling like a sea, half-hidden in clouds of steam ; 
the half-clad, shining negroes swinging the gigantic uten- 
sils with M'hich the seething flood is dipped from kettle 
to kettle; here, grouped at the end of the battery, the 
Creole planters with anxious faces drawing around their 
central figure as closely as they can ; and in the midst the 
old inoust/uekiifi', dipping, from time to time, the thick- 



HOW BORE MADE SUGAR. 113 

ening juice, repeating again and again his simple tests, 
until, in the moment of final trial, there is a common look 
of suspense, and instantly after it the hands are dropped, 
heads are raised, the brow is wiped, and there is a long 
breath of relief — " it granulates ! " 

The people were electrified. Etienne de Bore mar- 
keted $12,000 worth of superior sugar. The absence of 
interdictions that had stifled earlier trade enabled him to 
sell his product to advantage. The agriculture of the 
Delta was revolutionized ; and, seven jears afterward, 
New Orleans was the market for 200,000 gallons of rum, 
250,000 gallons of molasses, and 5,000,000 pounds of 
sugar. The town contained some twelve distilleries — 
probably not a subject for unmixed congratulation — and a 
sugar refinery which produced about 200,000 pounds of 
loaf sugar ; while on the other hand the production of 
indigo had declined to a total of 3,000 pounds, and soon 

after ceased. 
8 



XVI. 



THE CREOLES SING THE MARSEILLAISE. 

^r^lJE Spanish occupation never became more than a 
conquest, Tlie Spanish tongue, enforced in the 
courtt^ and principal public offices, never superseded the 
French in the mouths of the })eople, and left but a few 
words naturalized in the corrupt French of the slaves. 
To African organs of speech cocodr'u\ from cocodrilo, the 
, crocodile, was easier than 

caiman, the alligator ; the 
terrors of the calaboza, with 
its chains and whips and 
branding irons, were con- 
densed into the French 
tri-syllabic calaboose; while 
the pleasant institution of 
fiajja — the petty gratuity 
added, by the retailer, to 
anything bought — grew the 
pleasanter, drawn out into 
Gallicized lagnappe. 
The only newspaper in the town or province, as it was 
also the first, though published under the auspices of Car- 




In the Cabildo. 



THE CKEOLES SING THE MARSEILLAISE. 115 

ondelet, was the "Moniteur cle la Louisiane," printed 
entirely in French. It made its first appearance in 1794. 
Spanish Ursulines, sent from Havana to impart their 
own tongue, had to teach in French instead, and to con- 
tent themselves with the feeble achievement of extorting 
the Spanish catechism from girls who recited with tears 
rolling down their cheeks. The public mind followed — 
though at a distance — the progress of thought in France. 
Many Spaniards of rank cast their lot with the Creoles. 
Unzaga married a Maxent ; Galvez, her sister — a woman, 
it is said, of extraordinary beauty and loveliness; Gay- 
arre wedded Constance de Grandpre ; the intendant Od- 
vardo, her sister ; Miro, a de Macarty. But the Creoles 
never became Spanish ; and in society balls where the 
Creole civilian met the Spanish military official, the cotil- 
lon was French or Spanish according as one or the other 
party was the stronger, a question more than once decided 
by actual onset and bloodshed. The Spanish rule was 
least unpopular about 1791, when the earlier upheavals of 
the French revolution were regarded distantly, and before 
the Republic had arisen to fire the Creole's long-sup- 
pressed enthusiasm. Under Galvez, in 1779-82, they ral- 
lied heartily around the Spanish colors against their hered- 
itary British foe. But when, in 1793, Spain's foe was 
republican France, Carondelet found he was only holding 
a town of the enemy. Then the Creole could no longer 
restrain himself. " La Marseillaise ! La Marseillaise ! " 
he cried in his sorry little theatre ; and in the drinking- 



116 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

shops — that were thick as antiimn leaves — he sang, de- 
fiantly, " pa i'/'rt, ga ira, les arlstocrates cp la lanterned'' 
though there was not a lamp-post in his town until three 
years later, when the same governor put np eighty. 

Meantime Spain's hand came down again with a pres- 
sure that brought to ndnd the cruel }):ist. The people 
were made to come np and subscribe themselves Span- 
iards, and sundry persons were arrested and sent to 
Havana. The baron rebuilt the fortifications on a new 
and stronger plan. At the lower river corner was Fort 
St. Charles, a five-sided thing for one hundred and fifty 
men, with brick-faced parapet eighteen feet thick, a ditch, 
and a covert way ; at the upper river corner was Fort St. 
Louis, like it, but smaller. They were armed with about 
twelve eighteen- and twelve-pounders. Between them, 
where Toulouse Street opened upon the river-front, a 
large battery crossed fires with both. In the rear of the 
town were three lesser forts, mere stockades, with fraises. 
All around from fort to fort ran a parapet of earth sur- 
mounted with palisades, and a moat forty feet wide and 
seven deep. "These fortifications," wrote Carondelet, 
'• would not only protect the city against the attack of an 
enemy, but also keep in check its inhabitants. But for 
them," he said, " a revolution would have taken place." 

This was in 1794. Tlie enemy looked for from with- 
out was the pioneers of Kentucky, Georgia, etc. The 
abridgment of their treaty rights on the Mississippi had 
fretted them. Instigated by Genet, the French minister 



THE CREOLES SING THE MARSEILLAISE. 



117 



to the United States, and headed by one Clark and by 
Auguste de la Chaise, a Louisiana Creole of powerful 
family, who had gone to Kentucky for the purpose, they 
were preparing to make a descent upon New Orleans for 
its deliverance ; when events that await recital arrested the 
movement. 




iV ' ; '. V" 



A Royal Street Corner. 



XVII. 

THE AMERICANS. 

/^ARONDELET had strengtlieiied the walls that im- 
nmred tlie Creoles of isew Orleans ; but, outside, 
the messenger of their better destiny was knocking at the 
gate witli angry impatience. Congress had begun, in 
1779, to claim the freedom of the Mississippi, The 
treaty of 1783 granted this ; but in words only, not in 
fact. Spain intrigued, Congress menaced, and oppres- 
sions, concessions, aggressions, deceptions, and corruption 
lengthened out the years. New Orleans — " Orleens " the 
Westerners called it — there was the main difficulty. 
Every one could see now its approaching commercial 
greatness. To Spain it was the key of her possessions. 
To the AVest it was the only possible breathing-hole of its 
commerce. 

Miro was still governing ad interim^ when, in 1785, 
there came to him the commissioners from the State of 
Georgia demanding liberty to extend her boundary to the 
Mississippi, as granted in the treaty of peace. Miro an- 
swered wisely, referring the matter to the governments of 
America and Spain, and delays and exasperations con- 



THE AMERICANS. 119 

tinned. Bv 1786, if not earlier, the flat-boat fleets tliat 
came floating ont of the Ohio and Cumberland, seeking 
on the lower Mississippi a market and port for their hay 
and bacon and flour and corn, began to be challenged 
from the banks, halted, seized, and confiscated. The 
exasperated Kentuckians openly threatened and even 
planned to descend in flat-boats full of long rifles instead 
of breadstuffs, and make an end of controversy by the 
capture of New Orleans. But milder counsels restrained 
them, and they appealed to Congress to press Spain for 
the commercial freedom which they were determined to 
be deprived of no longer. 

Miro, and Navarro, the intendant, did well to be 
alarmed. They wrote home urging relief through cer- 
tain measures which they thought imperative if Xew 
Orleans, Louisiana, the Floridas, or even Mexico, was to 
be saved from early conquest. " No hay que j)erder 
tiemjpo " — " There is no time to be lost." They had two 
schemes : one, so to indulge the river commerce that the 
pioneers swarming down upon their borders might cross 
them, not as invaders, but as immigrants, yielding alle- 
giance to Spain ; the other, to foment a revolt against Con- 
gress and the secession of the West. These schemes were 
set on foot ; a large American immigration did set in, 
and the small town of Kew Madrid still commemorates 
the extravagant calculations of Western grantees. 

There had lately come to Kentucky a certain man 
whose ready insight and unscrupulous spirit of intrigue 



120 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

had promptly marked the turn of events. This was Gen- 
eral James AVilkinson, of the United States service, a 
man early distrusted by President "Washington, long sus- 
pected by the people, and finally tried for treasonable 
designs and accpiitted for want of evidence which the 
archives of Spain, to wliich access could not at that time 
be obtained, have since revealed. This cunning schemer 
and speculator, in June, 1787, sent and followed to Xew 
Orleans a large fleet of flat-boats loaded with the produce 
of the AVest, and practising on the political fears of Miro, 
secured many concessions. By this means he made way 
for a trade which began at once to be very profitable to 
New Orleans, not to say to many Spanish officials. But 
it was not by this means only. At the same time, he 
entered into a secret plot with Miro and Spain for that 
disruption of the West from the East which she sought 
to effect. " The delivering up of Kentucky into his 
Majesty's hands, which is the main object to which Wilk- 
inson has promised to devote himself entirely," so M-rote 
Miro to the Spanish Secretary of State, January 8, 1788, 
and AVilkinson's own letters, written originally in cipher, 
and now in the archives of Spain, reduced to the Spanish 
tongue, complete the overwhelming evidence. " When 
this is done, ... I shall disclose so much of our 
great scheme," etc. " Be satisfied, nothing shall deter 
me from attending exclusively to the object we have on 
hand." " The only feasible plan " — this was a year later 
— " . . . was . . . separation from the United 



THE AMERICANS. 121 

States, and an alliance with Spain." Such was the flat- 
boat toll paid by tliis lover of money and drink. 

But, neither for the Kentuckian nor the Creole was an 
export trade more than half a commerce. Philadelphia 
partly supplied the deficiency, though harried by corrupt 
double-dealings. Miro and Navarro favored and pro- 
moted this trade ; but Gardoqui, the Spanish minister at 
Philadelphia, not sharing in the profits, moved vigorously 
against it, and there was dodging and doubling— all the 
subterfuges of the contrabandist, not excepting false ar- 
rests and false escapes. The fire of 1788 gave Xavarro 
excuse to liberate a number whom fear of the king had 
forced him to imprison, and to give them back their con- 
fiscated goods. Such was one branch of the academy 
that, in later years, graduated the pirates of Barataria. 

The scarcity of provisions after the fire was made to 
help this Philadelphia trade. Miro sent three vessels to 
Gardoqui (who was suddenly ready to cooperate) for 
3,000 barrels of flour, and such other goods as the general 
ruin called for. And here entered Wilkinson, and in 
August, 1788, received through his agent, Daniel Clark, 
in Kew Orleans, a cargo of dry goods and other articles 
for the Kentucky market, probably the first boat-load of 
manufactured commodities that ever went up the Missis- 
sippi to the Ohio. Others followed Wilkinson's footsteps 
in matters of trade, and many were the devices for doing- 
one thing while seeming to do another. A pretence of 
coming to buy lands and settle secured passports for their 



122 THE fKEOLES OF LolISlAXA. 

fiat-boats and keel-boats, and the privilege of selling and 
buying free of duty. A profession of returning for fam- 
ilies and property opened the way back again up the tor- 
tuous I'iver, or along the wild, robber-haunted trails of the 
interior. 

So the Creoles, in their domestic commerce, were strik- 
ing hands with both the eastern and western "American." 
As to their transatlantic commerce, the concessions of 
1782 had yielded it into the hands of the Fi'ench, and 
there it still remained. " France," wrote Miro in 17UU, 
" has the monopoly of the commerce of this colony." It 
suited him not to mention Philadelphia or the Ohio. But 
war presently brought another change. 



XVIII. 

SPAIN AGAINST FATE. 

^T^IIE port of Kew Orleans was neither closed nor open. 
Spain was again in fear of Great Britain. The 
United States minister at Madrid was diligently pointing 
to the possibility of a British invasion of Louisiana from 
Canada, by way of the Mississippi ; to the feebleness of 
the Spanish foothold ; to the unfulfilled terms of the 
treaty of 1783 ; to the restlessness of the Iventuckians ; to 
everything, indeed, that could have effect in the effort to 
extort the cession of " Orleans " and the Floridas. But 
Spain held fast, and Miro, to the end of his governorship, 
plotted with Wilkinson and with a growing number of 
lesser schemers equally worthy of their country's execra- 
tion. 

Difficulties were multiplying when, at the close of 
1791, Miro gave place to Carondelet. Some were in- 
ternal ; and the interdiction of the slave-trade with re- 
volted St. Domingo, the baron's fortifications, the banish- 
ment of Yankee clocks branded with the Goddess of 
Liberty, etc., were signs of them, not cures. In February, 
1793, America finally wormed from Spain a decree of 



124 Tin-: ckeoles of Louisiana. 

open coinincrce, for her colonics, witli the ['nited States 
and Europe. Tliereupon Phihidelphians began to estab- 
lish commercial houses in New Orleans. 

On the side of the great valley, the Kentuckian was 
pressing with all the strength of his lean and sinewy 
shoulder. "Since my taking possession of the govern- 
ment," wrote Carondelet, in 1794, " this province . . . 
has not ceased to be threatened by the ambitious designs 
of the Americans." " A nation," as Kavarro had earlier 
called them, " restless, proud, ambitious, and capable of 
the most daring enterprise." Besides them, there were 
La Chaise, also, and Genet, and the Jacobins of Phila- 
delphia. 

It was to President Washington's vigilance and good 
faith that the baron owed the deliverance of the province 
from its dangers ; not to his own defences, his rigid police, 
nor his counter-plots with Thomas Power and others. 
These dangers past, he revived the obstruction and op- 
pression of the river trade, hoping, so, to separate yet 
the "Western pioneers from the union of States, to which 
they had now become devoted. 

But events tended ever one way, and while Carondelet 
was still courting Wilkinson through Power, a treaty, 
signed at Madrid October 20, 1795, declared the Missis- 
sippi free to the Americans, ]S'ew Orleans was made a 
port of deposit for three j'ears, free of all duty or charge, 
save " a fair price for the liire of the store-houses." The 
privilege was renewable at the end of the term, unless 



SPAIN AGAINST FATE, 125 

transferred by Spain to some " equivalent establishment " 
on the river bank. 

Still Carondelet held the east bank of the river, tem- 
porizing with the American authorities through his col- 
league, General Gayoso de Lemos, the Spanish commis- 
sioner, for making the transfer. He spent bribes freely, 
and strengthened his fortifications, not against Federal 
commanders only, but against the western immigrants 
who had crowded into the province, and against the re- 
newed probability of invasion from Canada. 

He made two other efforts to increase his strength. 
At the request of the cabildo he prohibited, for the time, 
the further importation of slaves, a plot for a bloody 
slave insurrection having been discovered in Pointe 
Coupee, a hundred and fifty miles up the Mississippi 
from ]^ew Orleans, and put down with much killing, 
whipping, and hanging. And he received with extrava- 
gant hospitality certain noble French refugees, who had 
sought asylum from the Reign of Terror on the wild 
western border of the United States. They were fur- 
nished with transportation from New Madrid to the 
AVashita, and were there to receive two hundred acres 
of land and one hundred dollars in money for every 
mechanic or farmer brought by them into the projected 
colony. The grant to the Marquis of Maison Rouge 
under these conditions was to embrace thirty thousand 
acres. That to the Baron de Bastrop was to cover one 
hundred and eight square miles, and there were others 



126 THE CKEOLKS OF LOUISIANA. 

of less imperial extent. The royal approval was secured 
upon these i^rants, but the grantees never fulfilled the 
conditions laid u]k»ii them, and these great enterprises 
melted down to famous lawsuits. French e/zi/^ms, never- 
theless, did and had already settled in Louisiana mider 
more reasonable grants got with more modest promises. 
The town of St. ^lartinsville, on the Bayou Teche, was 
settled by them and nicknamed le jx^tit J^iris — the little 
Paris ; and a chapter might well be devoted to this 
episode in the history of the Creoles. Xew Orleans 
even had the pleasm-e at length of entertaining for many 
weeks, with great gayety and social pomp, the Duke of 
Orleans, afterward King Louis Philippe, and his two 
brothers, the Duke of Montpensier and the Count of 
Peaujolais. Bore and the Marquis Marigny de Mande- 
ville were among their entertainers. 

The Creoles' republican enthusiasm found vent in a 
little patriotic singing and shouting, that cost six of 
them twelve months each of Cuban exile ; otherwise 
they remained, through all, i)assive. We have seen how 
they passed through an agricultural revolution. But they 
were no more a writing than a reading people, and what 
tempests of emotion many of them may have concealed 
while war -was being waged against France, while the(4uif 
was being scoured by French privateers, and when one of 
these seized, and for eight days held, the mouth of the 
Mississippi, may only be conjectured. AVe know that 
Etienne de Bore escaped arrest and transportation only by 




' N ffr— ~' l _iL— B B ^" 



SPAIN AGAINST FATE. 129 

reason of his rank and the people's devotion to him as a 
public benefactor. 

In 1797 Carondelet gave place to Gayoso de Lemos. 
Wilkinson, who was in chief command of the Ameri- 
can forces in the West, grew coy and cold. The en- 
croachments of the double-dealing general's subordinates 
could be resisted by the Spaniard no longer, and in 
March, 1798, he abandoned by stealth, rather than sur- 
rendered, the territory east of the Mississippi, so long 
unjustly retained from the States. 

All the more did the Creole city remain a bone of con- 
tention. On the close of the three-years' term named in 
the treaty of 1795, the intendant. Morales, a narrow and 
quarrelsome old man, closed the port, and assigned no 
other point to take its place. 

But the place had become too important, and the States 
too strong for this to be endured. The West alone could 
muster twenty thousand fighting men. John Adams was 
President. Secret preparations were at once set on foot 
for an expedition against Xew Orleans in overwhelming 
force. Boats were built, and troops had already been 
ordered to the Ohio, when it began to be plain that the 
President must retire from office at the close of his term, 
then drawing near ; and by and by Spain disavowed her 
intendant's action and reopened the closed port. 

Meanwhile another eye was turned covetously upon 
Louisiana, and one who never moved slowly was about to 
hurry her fate to a climax. 



XIX. 

NEW ORLEANS SOUGHT— LOUISIANA BOUGHT. 

'* "TpUAXCE has cut the knot," wrote Minister Living- 
ston to Secretary Madison. It is the word of 
Bonaparte himself, that his lirst diplomatic act with 
Spain had for its object the recovery of Louisiana. His 
power enabled him easily to outstrip American negotia- 
tions, and on the 1st of October, 1800, the Spanish King 
entered privately into certain agreements by which, on 
the 21st of March, ISOl, Louisiana, vast, but to Spain un- 
remunerative and indefensible, passed secretly into tlie 
hands of the First Consul in exchange for the petty 
Italian "kino-dom of Etruria," When Minister Livinc;- 
ston wrote, in Xovember, 1802, the secret was no longer 
unknown. 

On the 26th of March, 1803, M. Laussat, as French 
Colonial Prefect, landed in Xew Orleans, specially cum- 
missioned to prepare for the expected arrival of General 
Victor with a large body of troops, destined for the occu- 
pation of the province, and to arrange for the establish- 
ment of a new form of government. The Creoles were 
filled with secret consternation. Their fields, and streets, 



NEW ORLEANS SOUGHT — LOUISIANA BOUGHT. 131 

and dwellings were full of slaves. Tliey had heard the 
First Consul's words to the St. Domingans : " Whatever 
be your color or your origin, you are free." But their 
fears were soon quieted, when Laussat proclaimed the de- 
sign of their great new ruler to " preserve the empire of 
the laws and amend them slowly in the light of experience 
only." The planters replied that "their long-cherished 
hope was gratified, and their souls filled with the delir- 
ium of extreme felicity ; " and the townsmen responded : 
"Happy are the colonists of Louisiana who have lived 
long enough to see their reunion to France, which they 
have never ceased to desire, and which now satisfies their 
utmost wish." 

Governor Gayoso had died of yellow fever in 1799 — it 
is said shortly after a night's carousal with Wilkinson. 
He had been succeeded by the Marquis of Casa Calvo, 
and he, in 1801, by a weak, old man, Don Juan Manuel 
de Salcedo. The intendant Morales had continued to 
hate, dread, and hamper American immigration and com- 
.merce, and in October, 1802, had once more shut them 
out of Xew Orleans until six months later again discoun- 
tenanced by his king. 

In Congress debate narrowed down to the question 
whether New Orleans and the Floridas should be bought 
or simply swept down upon and taken. But the execu- 
tive department was already negotiating ; and, about the 
time of Laussat's landing in Louisiana, Messrs. Livingston 
and Monroe were commissioned to treat with France for 



132 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIAXA. 

a cession of Xcw Orleans and the Floridas, '• or as nuich 
thereof as the actual j)roprietor can be prevailed on to 
])art "vvith." 

Bonaparte easily saw the larger, hut nnconfessed wish 
of the United States. Louisiana, always light to get and 
heavy to hold, was slipping even from his grasp. He 
was about to rush into war with the English. '' They 
have," he exclaimed passionately to his ministei's, "twenty 
ships of war in the Gulf of Mexico. ... I have not 
a moment to lose in putting it [his new acquisition] out 
of their reach. They [the American commissioners] only 
ask of me one town in Louisiana ; but I already consider 
the colony as entirely lost." And a little later, M-alking 
in the garden of St. Cloud, he added to Marbois — whom 
he trusted rather than Talleyrand — " Well ! you have 
charge of the treasury; let them give you one hundred 
million francs, pay their own claims, and take the whole 
country." When the minister said something about the 
rights of the colonists, "Send your )ua.\ims to the London 
market," retorted the First Consul. 

The price finally agreed npon was eighty million francs, 
out of which the twenty million francs of American citi- 
zens' claims due by France M-ere to be paid, and Loui- 
iana was bought. Monsieur Marbois and Messrs. Living- 
ston and Monroe signed the treaty on the 30th of April, 
1803. As they finished, they rose and shook hands. 
" We have lived long," said Livingston, " but this is tlie 
noblest work of our lives." 



NEW OKLEAISrS SOUGHT — LOUISIAjSTA BOUGHT. 133 

About the last of July, when Casa Calvo and Salcedo, 
Spanish commissioner and governor, had proclaimed the 
coming transfer to France, and Lanssat, the French pre- 
fect, was looking hourly for General Victor and his forces, 
there came to Xew Orleans a vessel from Bordeaux with 
the official announcement that Louisiana had been ceded 
to the United States. 

On the 30th of Kovember, with troops drawn up in 
line on the Place d'Armes, and with discharges of artil- 
lery, Salcedo, fitly typifying, in his infirm old age, the de- 
caying kingdom which he represented, delivered to Lans- 
sat, in the hall of the cabildo, the keys of Xew Orleans ; 
while Casa Calvo, splendid in accomplishments, titles, and 
appearance, declared the people of Louisiana absolved 
from their allegiance to the King of Spain. From the 
flag-staff in the square the Spanish colors descended, the 
French took their place, and the domination of Spain in 
Louisiana was at an end. 

On Monday, December the 20th, 1803, with similar 
ceremonies, Laussat turned the province and the keys of 
its port over to Commissioners Claiborne and Wilkinson. 
The French tricolor, which had floated over the Place 
d'Armes for but twenty days, gave place to the stars and 
stripes, and New Orleans was an American town. 

AVithin a period of ninety-one years Louisiana had 
changed hands six times. From the direct authority of 
Louis XIY. it had been handed over, in 1712, to the com- 
mercial dominion of Anthony Crozat. From Crozat it 



i:u 



TIIK CinCOLES OF LOUISIANA. 



liad passctl, in 1717, to tlie Compagnie do TOccidcnt ; 
from the company, in 1731, to the undelegated authority 
of Louis XV. ; from liim, in 1702, to Spain ; from Spain, 




"l;**^-^^ 














Autographs from the Archives. 



in ISOl, back to France; and at length, in 1803, from 
France to the United States, finally emancipated from the 
service and bargainings of European masters. 



XX. 

NEW ORLEANS IN 1803. 

"'VTEW ORLEANS had been under the actual sway of 
the Spaniard for thirty-four years. Ten thousand 
inhabitants were gathered in and about its walls. Most 
of the wliites were Creoles. Even in the province at 
large these were three in every four. Immigrants from 
Malaga, the Canaries, and IS^ova Scotia had passed on 
through the town and into the rural districts. Of the 
thousands of Americans, only a few scores of mercantile 
pioneers came as far as the town — sometimes with fam- 
ilies, but generally without. Free trade with France 
had brought some French merchants, and the Reign 
of Terror, as we have seen, had driven here a few 
royalists. The town had filled and overflowed its orig- 
inal boundaries. From the mast-head of a ship in the 
harbor one looked down upon a gathering of from 
twelve hundred to fourteen hundred dwellings and 
stores, or say four thousand roofs — to such an extent 
did slavery multiply outhouses. They were of many 
kinds, covered with half -cylindrical or with flat tiles, with 
shingles, or with slates, and showed an endless variety in 



136 



THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 



heiglit and in l)riglit confusion of color and form — veran- 
das and balconios, dormer windows, lattices, and belve- 
deres. Tender the river bank, "within ten steps of 

Tclionpitoulas 
Street," where 
land has since 
formed and been 
covered M'ith 
brick stoi'cs for 
several s(juares, 
the fleets of 
barges and flat- 
boats from the 
AVest moored and un- 
loaded, or retailed their con- 
tents at the water's edge. Far- 
down, immediately abi'cast of 
the town, between the upper limits and 
the Place d'Armes, lay the shipping — 
twenty or more vessels of from 100 to 200 tons 
' burden, hauled close against the bank. Still farther 

on, beyond the Government warehouses, was the mooring- 
place of the vessels of war. Looking down into the streets 
— Toulouse, St. Peter, Conti, St. Louis, Poyale, Chartres 
— one caught the brisk movements of a commercial port. 
They were straight, and fairl}^ spacious, for the times ; but 
iinpaved, ill-drained, filthy, poorly lighted, and often im- 
passable for the mire. 




NEW ORLEANS IN 1803. 137 

The town was fast becoming one of the chief seaports 
of America. Ah-eadj, in 1802, 158 American merchant- 
men, 104 Spanish, and 3 French, registering 31,211 tons, 
had sailed from her harbor, loaded. The incoming ton- 
age for 1803 promised an increase of over 37 per cent. 
It exported of the products of the province alone over 
$2,000,000 value. Its imports reached $2,500,000. 
Thirty-four thousand bales of cotton ; 4,500 hogsheads of 
sugar ; 800 casks — equivalent to 2,000 barrels — of mo- 
lasses ; rice, peltries, indigo, lumber, and sundries, to the 
value of $500,000 ; 50,000 barrels of flour ; 3,000 barrels 
of beef and pork ; 2,000 hogsheads of tobacco ; and smaller 
quantities of corn, butter, hams, meal, laid, beans, hides, 
staves, and cordage, had passed in 1802 across its famous 
levee. 

Everywhere the restless American was conspicuous, 
and, with the Englishman and the Irishman, composed 
the majority of the commercial class. The French, ex- 
cept a few, had subsided into the retail trade or the 
mechanical callings. The Spaniards not in military or 
civil service were generally humble Catalans, keepers of 
shops, and of the low cabarets that occupied almost every 
street corner. The Creole was on every side — handsome, 
proud, illiterate, elegant in manner, slow, a seeker of 
office and military commission, ruling society with fierce 
exclusiveness, looking upon toil as the slave's proper 
badge, lending money now at twelve and now at twenty- 
four per cent., and taking but a secondary and unsympa- 



138 THE CREOLES OF LOT'ISIAXA. 

tlietic part in the commercial life from which was spring- 
inir the future <;reatiiess of his town. AVhat could he do? 
The American tilled the upper Mississippi Yalley. Eng- 
land and the Atlantic States, no longer France and Spain, 
took its products and supplied its M'ants. The Anglo- 
Saxon and tlie Irishman held every advantage ; and, ill- 
equipped and unconnnercial, the Creole was fortunate to 
secure even a third or fourth mercantile rank in the city 
of his birth. Ihit he had one stronghold, lie owned the 
url)an and sul)in-l)an real estate, and presently took high 
station as the seller of lots and as a rentier. The confis- 
cated plantations of the Jesuits had been, or were being, 
laid out in streets. From 1801, when Faubourg St. Mary 
contained only five houses, it had grown with great 
rapidity. 

Other fauboui'gs were about springing up. The high 
roofs of the aristocratic suburb St. Jean could be seen 
stretching away among their groves of evergreen along the 
Bayou road, and clustering presently into a village near 
where a " JJayou bridge " still crosses the stream, some 
two hundred yards below the site of the old one. Here 
gathered the larger craft of the lake trade, M-hile the 
smaller still pushed its way up Carondelet's shoaled and 
neglected, yet busy canal. 

Outwardly the Creoles of the Delta had become a 
graceful, well-knit race, in full keeping with the freedom 
of their surroundings, Tlieir complexion lacked ruddiness, 
but it was free from the sallowness of the Indies. There 



NEW ORLEAXS I]!^ 1803. 139 

was a much larger proportion of blondes among them than 
is commonly supposed. Generally their hair was of a 
chestnut, or but little deeper tint, except that in the city 
a Spanish tincture now and then asserted itself in black 
hair and eyes. The women were fair, symmetrical, with 
pleasing features, lively, expressive eyes, well-rounded 
throats, and superb hair ; vivacious, decorous, exceedingly 
tasteful in dress, adorning themselves with superior effect 
in draperies of nuislin enriched with embroideries and 
much garniture of lace, but with a more mode-rate display 
of jewels, which indicated a community of limited wealth. 
They were much superior to the men in quickness of wit, 
and excelled them in amiability and in many other good 
(jualities. The more pronounced faults of the men were 
generally those moral provincialisms which travellers re- 
count with undue impatience. They are said to have 
been coarse, boastful, vain ; and they were, also, deficient 
in energy and application, without well-directed ambition, 
unskilful in handicraft — doubtless through negligence only 
—and totally wanting in that community feeling which 
begets the study of reciprocal rights and obligations, 
and reveals the individual's advantage in the promotion 
of the common interest. Hence, the Creoles were fonder 
of pleasant fictions regarding the salubrity, beauty, good 
order, and advantages of their town, than of measures to 
justify their assumptions. With African slavery they 
were, of course, licentious, and they were always ready for 
the duelling-ground ; yet it need not seem surprising that 



140 



THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 



a people so beset by evil inflnences from every direction 
were generally unconscious of a reprehensible state of af- 
fairs, and preserved their self-respect and a proud belief 
in their moral excellence. Easily inflamed, they were as 
easily discouraged, thrown into confusion, and overpow- 
ered, and they expended the best of their energies in 
trivial pleasures, especially the masque and the dance ; 
yet they were kind parents, affectionate wives, tractable 
children, and enthusiastic patriots. 




Transom in the Pontalba Buildings, Jackson Square. 



XXL 

FROM SUBJECTS TO CITIZENS. 

T~ ITTLE wonder that it is said the Creoles wept as 
thej stood on the Place d'Armes and saw the stand- 
ard of a people, whose national existence was a mere 
twenty-years' experiment, taking the place of that tricolor 
on which perched the glory of a regenerated France. On 
that very spot some of them had taken part in the armed 
repudiation of the first cession. The two attitudes and 
the two events differed alike. The earlier transfer had 
come loaded with drawbacks and tyrannous exactions ; the 
latter came freighted with long-coveted benefits and with 
some of the dearest rights of man. This second, there- 
fore, might bring tears of tender regret ; it might force 
the Creole into civil and political fellowship with the de- 
tested Ainericain / but it could not rouse the sense of 
outrage produced by the cession to Spain, or of uniform 
popular hatred against the young Virginian whom Presi- 
dent Jefferson had transferred from the Governorship of 
the Territory of Mississippi to that of Louisiana. O'Reilly, 
the Spanish Captain-General, had established a government 
whose only excellence lay in its strength ; Claiborne came 



142 



TIIJ: CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 



to set np a power wliose only strengtli lay in its excel- 
lence. His task was ditticiilt mainly because it was to be 
done among a people distempered by the badness of earlier 
rule, and diligently wrought upon by intriguing Frenchmen 
and Spanish officials. 11 is wisest measures, ecjually with his 
broadest mistakes, were wordily resented. His ignorance 




William Charles Cole Claiborne, Governor of Louisiana fronn 1803 to 1816. 

of the French language, his large official powers, Wilkin- 
son's bad habits, a scarcity of money, the introduction of 
the English tongue, and of a just proportion of American 
appointees into the new courts and public offices, the use 
of bayonets to suppress disorder at public balls, a sup- 
posed partiality for Americans in court, the jiersonal char- 



FROM SUBJECTS TO CITIZENS. 143 

acter of officials, the formation of American militia com- 
panies and their parades in the streets — all alike fed the 
flames of the Creoles' vehement indignation. 

In March, 180-1, Congress passed an act dividing the 
province into two parts on the present northern boundary 
of Louisiana, giving each a distinct government, and to 
the lower the title of the territory of Orleans. This act, 
which was to take effect the following October, inter- 
dicted the slave-trade. Then, indeed, anger burned. In- 
surrectionary sentiments were placarded on the street 
corners, crowds copied them, and public officers attempt- 
ing to remove them were driven away. But that was all. 
Claiborne — ^young, like Bienville and like Galvez, but 
benevolent, wise, and patient — soon saw it was not the 
Government, but only some of its measures, that caused 
so much heat. Tlie merchants, who in 1768 had incited 
revolt against legalized ruin, saw, now, on the other hand, 
that American rule had lifted them out of commercial 
serfdom, and that, as a port of the United States, and 
only as such, their crescent city could enter upon the great 
future which was hers by her geographical position. But 
we have seen that the merchants were not principally 
Creoles. 

Although the Creoles looked for a French or Spanish 
re-cession, yet both interest and probability were so 
plainly against it that they were presently demanding ini- 
patientl}', if not imperiously, the rights of American citi- 
zens as pledged to them in the treaty. They made no 



144 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

appeal to that France Mliich liad a secoiul time cast them 
off; hut at three jmhlic meetings, in June and 'Inly, 
petitioned Congress not to rescind the cession but to leave 
Louisiana undivided, and so hasten their admission into 
the Tniun. This appeal was fruitless, and the territorial 
government went into operation, Claiborne being retained 
as governor. The partition, the presidential appointment 
of a legislative council instead of its election by the peo- 
ple, tlie nullification of certain Spanish land grants, and 
an olHcial re-inspection of all titles, were accepted, if not 
with patience, at least with that grace which the Creole 
assumes before the inevitable. I>ut his respect was not 
always forthcoming toward laws that could be opposed or 
evaded. " This city," wrote Claiborne, " requires a strict 
police : the inhabitants are of various descriptions ; many 
highly respectable, and some of them very degenerate.'' 
A sheriff and posse attempted to arrest a Spanish officer. 
Two hundred men interfered ; swords were drawn, and 
resistance ceased only when a detachment of United States 
troops were seen hurrying to the rescue. Above all, the 
slave-trade — " all-important to the existence of the coun- 
try" — was diligently plied through the lakes and tlie in- 
lets of Barataria. 

The winter of 1804-05 was freer from bickerings than 
the last had been. The intrigues of Spanish officials who 
lingered in the district were unavailing, and the Gov- 
ernor reported a gratifying state of order. On the 2d of 
March, with many unwelcome safeguards and limitations, 



FEOM SUBJECTS TO CITIZENS. 



145 



the right was accorded tlie people to elect a House of 
Representatives, and " to form for themselves a constitu- 
tion and State government so soon as the free population 




Rev. Father Antonio de Sedella (Pere Antoine). 

of the territory should reach sixty thousand souls, in order 
to be admitted into the Union." 

For a time following there was feverishness rather than 
events. Great Britain and Spain were at war ; Havana 
was open to neutral vessels ; the commerce of Xew Or- 
leans was stimulated. But tlie pertinacious lingering of 
10 



14G THE CREOLES OT LOl'ISIAXA. 

Casa-Calvo, Morales, and otlicrs, — wlioiii Claiborne at 
last had to force away in Fel)ruary, ISO^), — the rumors 
they kept alive, the fear of war with Spain, doubts as to 
how the Creoles would or should stand, party strife among 
the Americans in Kew Orleans, and a fierce quarrel in the 
Church between the vicar-general and the famed Pere 
Antttiiie, pastor of the cathedral, kept the public mind in 
a perpetual ferment. Still, in all these things there was 
only restiveness and discord, not revolution. The Creoles 
had at length imdergone their last transplanting, and 
taken root in American privileges and principles. From 
the guilt of the plot whose events were now impending 
the Creole's hand is clean. AVe have Claiborne's testi- 
mony : 

" Were it not for the calumnies of some Frenchmen 
who are among us, and the intrigues of a few ambitious, 
unprincipled men whose native language is English, I do 
believe that the Louisianians would be very soon the most 
zealous and faithful members of our republic." 

On the 4tli of Xovember, 1811, a convention elected by 
the people of Orleans Territory met in New Orleans, and 
on the 2Stli of the following January adopted a State 
constitution ; and on the 30th of April, 1812, Louisiana 
entered the Union, 



>^ 



XXII. 

BURR'S CONSPIRACY. 

/^N one of those summer evenings when the Creoles, 
in the early years of the century, were wont to 
seek the river air in domestic and social groups under the 
willow and china trees of their levee, there glided around 
the last bend of the Mississippi above ISTew Orleans " an 
elegant barge," equipped w^ith sails and colors, and im- 
pelled by the stroke of ten picked oarsmen. It came 
down the harbor, drew in to the bank, and presently set 
ashore a small, slender, extremely handsome man, its only 
passenger. He bore letters from General Wilkinson, in- 
troducing him in jS^ew Orleans, and one, especially, to 
Daniel Clark, Wilkinson's agent, stating that " this great 
and honorable man would communicate to him many 
things improper to letter, and which he would not say to 
any other." Claiborne wrote to Secretary Madison, " Col- 
onel Burr arrived in this city on this evening." 

The date was June 26, 1805. The distinguished vis- 
itor, a day or two later, sat down to a banquet given to 
him by the unsuspecting Governor. He was now in full 
downward career. Only a few years before he had failed 
of the presidency by but one electoral vote. Only a few 



148 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

luoiitlis had passed since, on completing liis term, he hud 
vacated the vice-presidency. In tlie last year of that term 
Alexander Hamilton had fallen by his hand. Friends 
and power, both, Mere lost. But he yet had strength in 
the "West. Its people were still wild, restless, and eager 
for adventure. The conquest of " Orleans •' was a tra- 
ditional idea. Its banks were full of specie.' Clouds of 
revolution were gathering all around the Gulf. The 
regions beyond the lied and the Sabine Kivers invited con- 
quest. The earlier schemes of Adams and Hamilton, to 
seize Orleans Island and the Floridas for the United 
States ; that of Miranda, to expel the Spanish power from 
the farther shores of the (iulf ; the ])l(tttings of AVilkin- 
son, to surrender the West into the hands of Spain — all 
these abandoned projects seem to have cast their shadows 
on the mind of Burr and colored his designs. 

The stern patriotism of the older States had Aveighed 
him in its balances and rejected him. He had turned 
with a vagueness of plan that waited for clearer definition 
on the chances of the future, and, pledged to no principle, 
had set out in quest of aggrandizement and empire, either 
on the Mississippi or among the civilizations that encircle 
the (iulf of Mexico, as the turn of events might decree. 
In the West, he had met AVilkinson, and was now in cor- 
respondence with him. 

The Governor M-ho had feasted him moved much in the 
gay society of the Creoles. It was not giddiness, but 
anxious thought and care that pushed him into such 



burr's conspiracy. 149 

scenes. Troubles and afflictions marked his footsteps ; liis 
wife and child stricken down by yellow fever, her young 
brother-in-law rashly championing him against the sneers 
of his enemies, fallen in a duel ; but it was necessary to 
avoid the error — Ulloa's earlier error — of self-isolation. 
He wisely, therefore, mingled in the gayeties of the touchy 
people, even took from among them — after a short year of 
widowhood — a second wife, bore all things without resent- 
ment, and by thus studying the social side of the people, 
viewed public questions from behind. 

The question ever before him — which he was inces- 
santly asking himself, and which he showed an almost 
morbid wish to be always answering to the heads of de- 
partments at Washington — was whether the Creoles over 
whom he was set to rule were loyal to the government of 
the nation. It was a vital question. The bonds of the 
Union, even outside of Louisiana, were as yet slender and 
frail. The whole Mississippi valley was full of designing 
adventurers, suspected and unsuspected, ready to reap any 
advantage whatever of any disaffection of the people. He 
knew there were such in Xew Orleans. 

The difficulty of answering this question lay in one 
single, broad difference between Claiborne himself and 
the civilization which he had been sent to reconstruct into 
harmony with North American thought and action. 
With him loyalty to the State meant obedience to its 
laws. The Creole had never been taught that there was 
any necessary connection between the two. The Govern- 



150 THE CKE0LE8 OF LOUISIAXA. 

or's young Virginian spirit assumed it as self-evitlcnt that 
a man would either keep the laws or overturn them. It 
\vas a strange state of society to him, where one could be 
a patriot and yet ignore, evade, and override the laws 
of the country he loved. " Occasionally, in conversation 
with ladies," — so he writes — " I have denounced smug- 
glhig as dishonest, and very generally a reply, in substance 
as follows, would be returned : ' That is impossible, for 
my grandfather, or my father, or my husband was, under 
the Spanish Government, a great smuggler, and he was 
always esteemed an honest man.'" They might have 
added, '• and loyal to the king." 

AVith some men Claiborne had had no trouble. "A 
beginning must be made," said Poydras, a wealthy and 
benevolent Frenchman ; " we nmst be initiated into the 
sacred duties of freemen and the practices of liberty." 
But the mass, both high and low, saw in the abandonment 
of smuggling or of the slave-trade only a surrender of ex- 
istence — an existence to which their own consciences and 
the ladies at the ball gave them a clean patent. These, 
by their angry obduracy, harassed their governor with 
ungrounded fears of sedition. 

In fact, the issue before governor and people was one 
to which the question of fealty to government was quite 
subordinate. It was the struggle of a North American 
against a Spanish American civilization. Burr must have 
seen this ; and probably at this date there was nothing 
clearly and absolutely fixed in his mind but this, that the 



burr's conspiracy. 151 

former civilization had cast liim oif, and that he was about 
to offer himself to the latter. New events were to an- 
swer the Governor's haunting question, and to give a new 
phase to the struggle between these two civilizations in 
the Mississippi valley. 

Colonel Burr remained in New Orleans ten or twelve days, 
receiving much social attention, and then left for St. Louis, 
saying he would return in October. But he did not appear. 

During the winter the question of boundaries threat- 
ened war with Spain, and the anger of Spain rose high 
when, in February, 1806, Claiborne expelled her agents, 
the resplendent Casa-Calvo and the quarrelsome Morales, 
from the Territory. The Spanish governor of Florida 
retorted by stopping the transmission of the United States 
mails through that province. Outside, the Spaniards 
threatened ; inside, certain Americans of influence did 
hardly less. The Creoles were again supine. Pere An- 
toine, the beloved pastor of the cathedral, was suspected 
— unjustly — of sedition; Wilkinson with his forces was 
unaccountably idle. " All is not right," wrote Claiborne ; 
" I know not whom to censure ; but it seems to me that 
there is wrong somewhere." 

The strange character of the Creole people perplexed 
and wearied Claiborne. Unstable and whimsical, public- 
spirited and sordid by turns, a display of their patriotism 
caused a certain day to be "among the happiest of his 
life ; " and when autumn passed and toward its close their 
enthusiasm disappeared in their passion for money-getting, 



152 TIIK CREOLES OK LOUISIANA. 

he "began to tlespair." JUit, alike unknown in the Creole 
town — to money -getters and to patriots — the only real dan- 
ger had ])as^t'd. Wilkinson liad decided to betray Burr. 

Late in JSepteniber the General had arrived at Xatchi- 
toches, and had taken chief connnand of the troops con- 
fronting the Spanish forces. On the Sth of October, one 
Sanuiel Swartwout l)rought him a confidential letter from 
Colonel Burr, llo was received l)y AVilkinson Avith much 
attention, stayed eight days, and then left for New Or- 
leans. On the 21st, Wilkinson determined to expose the 
plot. lie despatched a messenger to the President of the 
United States, bearing a letter which apprised him of 
Colonel Burr's contemplated descent of the Mississippi 
with an armed foi'ce. Eight days later, the General ar- 
ranged with the Spaniards for the troops under each flag 
to withdraw from the contested boundary, leaving its 
location to be settled by the two governments, and hast- 
ened toward New Orleans, hurrying on in advance of him 
a force of artificers and a company of soldiers. 

Presently the people of New Orleans were startled 
from apathetic tranquillity into a state of panic. All un- 
explained, these troops had arrived, others had re-enforced 
them ; there was hurried repair and ]M-eparation ; and the 
air was agitated with rumors. To Claiborne, the revela- 
tion had at length come from various directions that 
Aaron Burr was plotting treason. Thousands were said 
to be involved with him ; the first outbreak was expected 
to be in New Orleans. 



bukr's conspiracy. 153 

"Wilkinson had arrived in the town. In the bombastic 
stjde of one who plays a part, he demanded of Claiborne 
the proclamation of martial law, Claiborne kindly, and 
with expressions of confidence in the General, refused; 
but the two met the city's chamber of commerce, laid the 
plot before it, and explained the needs of defence. Sev- 
eral thousand dollars were at once subscribed, and a tran- 
sient embargo of the port recommended, for the purpose 
of procuring sailors for the four gun -boats and two bomb- 
ketches lying in the harbor. 

There were others in whose confidence Wilkinson held 
no place. The acting-governor of Mississippi wrote to 
Claiborne : " Should he [Colonel Burr] pass us, your fate 
will depend on the General, not on the Colonel, If I stop 
Burr, this may hold the General in his allegiance to the 
United States. But if Burr passes the territory with two 
thousand men, I have no doubt but the General will be your 
worst enemy. Be on your guard against the wily General, 
He is not much better than Catiline, Consider him a traitor 
and act as if certain thereof. You may save yourself by it." 

On Sunday, the 14th of December, a Dr. Erick Boll- 
man was arrested by Wilkinson's order, Swartwout and 
Ogden had already been apprehended at Fort Adams, 
and were then confined on one of the bomb-ketches in the 
harbor. On the 16th, a court officer, armed with writs of 
habeas corpus, sought in vain to hire a boat to carry him 
off to the bomb-ketch, and on the next day, when one 
could be procured, only Ogden could be found. 



l.")4 THE CRE0L3-:S OF LOri.>IAXA. 

lie was liljerated, but only to be re-urrcstcd with one 
Alexander, and lield in the face of the Jiaheas corpus. 
The court istjued an attachment against Wilkinson. It 
was powerless, 'riie .Judge — Workman — appealed to Clai- 
borne to sustain it with force. The Governor promptly 
declined, the Judge resigned, and AVilkinson ruled. 

One of Burr's intimates was General Adair. On the 
14th of January, 1807, he aj)])cart'd in New Orleans un- 
announced. Colonel Burr, he said, with only a sei'vant, 
would arrive in a few days. As he was sitting at dinner, 
his hotel was surrounded by regulars, an aide of AVilkin- 
son appeared and arrested him ; he was confined, and 
presently was sent away. The troops beat to arms, regulars 
and militia paraded through the terrified city, and Judge 
"Workman, w'ith two others, Avere thrown into confinement. 
They were released within twenty-four hours ; but to inten- 
sify the general alarm, four hundred Spaniards from Pen- 
sacola arrived at the mouth of Bayou St. John, a few miles 
from the city, on their way to Baton Rouge, and tlieir 
commander asked of Claiborne that he and his staff might 
pass through Kew Orleans. He was refused the liberty. 

All this time the Creoles had been silent. Now, how- 
ever, through their legislature, they addressed their gov- 
ernor. They washed their hands of the treason which 
threatened the peace and safety of Louisiana, but boldly 
announced their intention to investigate the " extraordin- 
ary measures " of Wilkinson and to complain to Congress. 

Burr, meanwhile, with the mere nucleus of a force, had 



burr's conspiracy. 155 

set his expedition in motion, and at length, after twenty 
years' threatening by the Americans of the West, a fleet 
of boats actnally bore an armed expedition down the Ohio 
and out into the Mississippi, bent on conquest. 

But disaster lay in wait for it. It failed to gather 
strength as it came, and on the 2Sth of January the news 
reached ]^ew Orleans that Burr, having arrived at a point 
near j^atchez with fourteen boats and about a hundred 
men, had been met by Mississippi militia, arrested, taken 
to Xatchez, and released on bond to appear for trial at the 
next term of the Territorial Court. 

This bond Burr ignored, and left the Territory. The 
Governor of Mississippi offered $2,000 for his apprehen- 
sion, and on the 3d of March the w-elcome word came to 
N^ew Orleans that he had been detected in disguise and 
re-arrested at Fort Stoddart, Alabama. 

About the middle of May, Wilkinson sailed from New 
Orleans to Virginia to testify in that noted trial which, 
though it did not end in the conviction of Burr, made 
final w^reck of his designs, restored public tranquillity, 
and assured the country of the loyalty not only of the 
West, but also of the Creoles of Louisiana. The struggle 
between the two civilizations withdrew finally into the 
narrowest limits of the Delta, and Spanish American 
thought found its next and last exponent in an individual 
without the ambition of empire, — a man polished, brave 
and chivalrous ; a patriot, and yet a contrabandist ; an 
outlaw, and in the end a pirate. 



XXIII. 

THE WEST INDIAN COUSIN. 

"DETWEEN 1S04 and ISIO, Xew Orleans douljled its 
population. The common notion is that there was 
a large influx of Anglo-Americans. This was not the case. 
A careful estimate shows not more than 3,100 of these in 
the city in 1809, yet in the following year tlie whole 
population, including the suburbs, was 24,552. The 
Americans, therefore, were numerically feeble. The in- 
crease came from another direction. 

Napoleon's wars were convulsing Europe. The navies 
of his enemies fell upon the French West Indies. In 
Cuba large numbers of white and mulatto refugees who, 
in the St. Domingan insurrection, had escaped across to 
Cuba with their slaves, were now, by hostilities between 
France and Spain, forced again to become exiles. With- 
in sixty days, between May and July, 1809, thirty-four 
vessels from Cuba set ashore in the streets of New Or- 
leans nearly fifty-eight hundred persons — M'hites, free 
mulattoes, and black slaves in almost equal numbers. 
Others came later frum Cuba, Guadaluu^ic, and other 



THE WEST INDIAN COUSIlSr. 157 

islands, until they amounted to ten thousand. I^early all 
settled permanently in New Orleans. 

The Creoles of Louisiana received the Creoles of the 
West Indies with tender welcomes. The state of society 
in the islands from which these had come needs no de- 
scription. As late as 1871, '72, and '73, there were in the 
island of Guadaloupe only three marriages to a tliousand 
inhabitants. But they came to their better cousins with 
the ties of a common religion, a common tongue, much 
connnon sentiment, misfortunes that may have had some 
resemblance, and with the poetry of exile. They were re- 
enforcements, too, at a moment when the power of the 
Americans — few in number, but potent in energies and 
advantages — was looked upon with hot jealousy. 

The Anglo-Americans clamored against them, for they 
came in swarms. They brought little money or goods. 
They raised the price of bread and of rent. They 
lowered morals and disturbed order. Yet it was certainly 
true the Anglo-Americans had done little to improve 
either of these. Some had come to stay ; many more 
to make a fortune and get away ; both sorts were sim- 
ply and only seeking wealth. 

The West Indians had not come to a city whose civili- 
zation could afford to absorb them. The Creole element 
needed a better infusion, and yet it was probably the best 
in the community. The Spaniards were few and bad, de- 
scribed by one as capable of the vilest depredations, " a 
nuisance to the country," and even by the mild Claiborne 



158 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

as " for the most part . . . well suited for mischiev- 
ous and wicked enterprises." The free people of color 
were ul>out two thonsiind, nii;isj)iring, corrupted, and 
feeble. The tloating- |M.)pulation was extremely bad. 
Sailors from all parts of the world took sides, according 
to nationality, in bloody street riots and night brawls ; 
and bai'genien, Hat-boatmen, and raftsmen, from the wild 
banks of the Ohio, Tennessee, and Cumberland, alxan- 
doned themselves at the end of their journey to the most 
shameful and reckless excesses. The spirit of strife ran 
np into the better classes. A newspaper article reflecting 
upon Kapoleon all but caused a riot. A public uprising 
M-as hardly prevented when three young navy officers re- 
leased a slave girl who was being whipped. In Septem- 
ber, 1807, occurred the " batture riots.'' The Ijatture was 
the sandy deposits made by the Mississippi in front of the 
Faubourg St. Marie. The noted jurist, Edward Living- 
ston, representing private claimants, took possession of 
tliis ground, and was opposed by the public in two dis- 
tinct outbreaks. In the second, the Creoles, ignoring the 
decision of the Supreme Court, rallied to the spot by 
thousands, and were quieted oidy by the patient appeals 
of Claiborne, addressed to them on the spot, and by the 
recommittal of the contest to the United States courts, in 
whose annals it is so well-known a cause. Preparations 
for war with Spain heightened the general fever. Clai- 
borne's letters dwell on the sad mixture of society. 
''England," he writes, '-has her partisans; Ferdinand 



THE WEST INDIAN COUSIN. 



159 



the Seventh, some faithful subjects ; Bonaparte, his ad- 
mirers ; and there is a fourth description of men, com- 
monly called Burrites, who would join any standard 
which would promise rapine and plunder." These last 
had a newspaper, "La Lanterne Magique," whose libels 
gave the executive nmch anxiety. 




''iffsaif^ 



W3^ ^ 






In Rue du Maine. 



Kow, into such a city — say of fourteen thousand inhab- 
itants, at most — swarm ten thousand white, yellow, and 
black West India islanders ; some with means, others in 
absolute destitution, and " many ... of doubtful 
character and desperate fortune." Americans, English, 



100 THE CKKOLES OF LOFISIAXA. 

Spanish, ciy aloud; the haws forbid the importation of 
slaves ; Claiborne adjures the American consuls at Ha- 
vana and Santiago de Cuba to stop the movement ; the 
free people of color are ordered point-blank to leave the 
country ; the actual effort is made to put the order into 
execution ; and still all three classes continue to pour into 
the streets, to throw themselves upon the town's hospit- 
ality, and daily to increase the cost of living and the 
number of distressed poor. 

They came and they stayed, in Orleans Street, in Du 
Maine, St. Philippe, St. Peter, Dauphinc, Burgundy, and 
the rest, all too readily dissolving into the corresponding 
parts of the native Creole community, and it is easier to 
underestimate than to exaggerate the silent results of an 
event that gave the French-speaking Louisianians twice 
the numerical power with which they had begun to wage 
theii' long battle against American absorption. 



XXIV. 

THE PIRATES OF BARATARIA. 

XT has already been said that the whole Gulf coast of 
Louisiana is sea-marsh. It is an immense, wet, level 
expanse, covered everywhere, shoulder-high, with marsh- 
grasses, and indented by extensive bays that receive the 
rivers and larger bayous. For some sixty miles on either 
side of the Mississippi's mouth, it breaks into a grotesque- 
ly contorted shore-line and into bright ai-chipelagoes of 
hundreds of small, reedy islands, with narrow and ob- 
scure channels writhing hither and thither between them. 
These mysterious passages, hidden from the eye that 
overglances the seemingly unbroken sunny leagues of sur- 
rounding distance, are threaded only by the far-seen 
white or red lateen-sail of the oyster-gatherer, or by the 
pirogue of the hunter stealing upon the myriads of wild 
fowl that in winter haunt these vast green wastes. 

To such are known the courses that enable them to 
avoid the frequent culs-de-sac of the devious shore, and 
that lead to the bayous which open the way to the inhab- 
ited interior. They lead through miles of clear, brown, 

silent waters, between low banks fringed with dwarf oaks, 
11 



162 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

across pale green distances of " qnaking praii'ie," in whose 
sliallow, winding coolies the smooth, dark, sliining needles 
of the round rush stand twelve feet high to overpeer the 
bulrushes, and at length, under the solemn shades of cy- 
press swamps, to the near neighborhood of the Mississippi, 
fi-om whose flood the process of delta-growth has cut the 
bayou off. Across the mouths of the frequent bays that 
indent this marshy coast-line stretch long, slender keys of 
dazzling, storm-heaped sand — sometimes of cultivable soil. 
About sixty miles south from the bank of the Missis- 
sippi as that river flows eastward by Kew Orleans, lies 
Grande Terre, a very small island of this class, scarce two 
miles long, and a fourth as wide, stretching across two-thirds 
of the entrance of ]3arataria Bay, but leaving a pass of about 
a mile width at its western end, with a navigable channel. 
Behind this island the waters of the bay give a safe, deep 
harbor. At the west of the bay lies a multitude of small, 
fenny islands, interwoven with lakes, bays, and passes, 
named and unnamed, affording cunning exit to the bayous 
La Fourche and Terre Bonne and the waters still beyond. 
They are populous beyond estimate with the prey of 
fowler and fisherman, and of the huge cormorant, the gull, 
the man-of-war bird, the brown pelican and the alba- 
tross. Here in his time the illustrious Creole nat- 
uralist, Audubon, sought and found in great multi- 
tude the white pelican, now so rare, that rose at the 
sound of his gun and sailed unwillingly away on wings 
that measured eight feet and a half from tip to tip. 



THE PIKATES OF BAEATARIA. 163 

J^orthwai'd the bay extends some sixteen miles, and then 
breaks in every direction across the illimitable wet prai- 
ries into lakes and bayous. Throngh one of these — the 
bayou Barataria, with various other local names — a way 
opens irregularly northward. Xow and then it widens into 
a lake, and narrows again, each time more than the last, 
the leagues of giant reeds and rushes are left behind, a few 
sugar and rice plantations are passed, standing, lonely and 
silent, in the water and out of the water, the dark shad- 
ows of the moss-hung swamp close down, and the stream's 
windings become more and more difficult, until near its 
head a short canal is entered on the right, and six miles 
farther on the forest opens, you pass between two plan- 
tations, and presently are stopped abruptly by the levee of 
the Mississippi. You mount its crown, and see, opposite, 
the low-lying city, with its spires peering up from the 
sunken plain, its few wreaths of manufactory smoke, and 
the silent stir of its winding harbor. Canal Street, its 
former upper boundary, is hidden two miles and a half 
away down the stream. There are other Baratarian 
routes, through lakes Salvador or Des Allemands, and 
many obscure avenues of return toward the Gulf of Mex- 
ico or the maze of wet lands intervening. 

In the first decade of the century the wars of France 
had filled this gulf with her privateers. Spain's rich 
commerce was the prey around which they hovered, and 
Guadaloupe and Martinique their island haunts. From 
these the English, operating in the AVest Indies, drove 



164 THE CREOLES OF LOriSIAXA. 

tlieiii out, and wlien in February, 181U, Guadaloupc com- 
pleted tlio list of their conquests, the French privateers 
were as homeless as Koah's raven. 

They were exiled on the open Gulf, witli the Spaniards 
lining its every shore, except one, where American neu- 
trality motioned them austerely away. This was Louis- 
iana. But this, of all shores, suited them best. Thou- 
sands of their brethren already tilled the streets of Xe\v 
Orleans, and commanded the sympathies of the native 
Creoles. The tangled water-waj^s of Barataria, so well 
known to snmgglei's and slavers, and to so few beside, 
leading by countless windings and intersections to the 
markets of the thriving city, offered the rarest facilities 
for their purposes. Between this shelter and the distant 
harbors of France there could be no question of choice. 

Hither they came, fortified Grande Terre, built store- 
houses, sailed away upon the Gulf, and re-appeared with 
prizes which it seems were not always Spanish. The 
most seductive auctions followed. All along this coast 
there are vast heaps of a species of clam-shell, too great to 
admit the idea of their being other than the work of 
nature. Great oaks grow on them. The aborigines, 
mound-builders, used these places for temple-sites. One 
of them, in Barataria, distinguished from larger neighbors 
by the name of Petit Temple, "the Little Temple," re- 
moved of late years for the value of its shells as a paving 
material, yielded three hundred thousand barrels of them, 
A notable group of these mounds, on one of the larger 



THE PIRATES OF BAEATARIA. 165 

islands of Barataria, became the privateers' chief place of 
sale and barter. It was known as the Temple. There 
was no scarcity of buyers fi'om ]^ew Orleans and the sur- 
rounding country. Goods were also smuggled up the 
various bayous, especially La Fourche. Then the cap- 
tured vessels were burned or refitted, sails were spread 
again, and prows were pointed toward the Spanish Main. 
The Baratarians had virtually revived, in miniature, the 
life of the long-extinct buccaneers. 

On the beautiful, wooded, grassy and fertile " Grande 
Isle," lying just west of their stronghold on " Grande 
Terre," and separated from it only by the narrow jDass 
that led out to sea, storehouses and dwellings were built, 
farms and orangeries yielded harvests, and green meadows 
dotted with wax-myrtles, casinos, and storm-dwarfed oaks 
rose from the marshy inland side where the children and 
women plied their shrimp and crab nets, and, running 
down to the surf- beach on the southern side, looked 
across the boundless open Gulf toward the Spanish Main. 

The fame of the Baratarians spread far and wide ; and 
while in neighboring States the scandalous openness of 
their traiSc brought loud condemnation upon Louisiana 
citizens and officials alike, the merchants and pjanters of 
the Delta, profiting by these practices, with the general 
public as well, screened the contrabandists and defended 
their character. 

Much ink has been spilled from that day to this to 
maintain that they sailed under letters of marque. But 



lOG THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

certainly no coniniissioii could Itc Avortli the unrolling 
mIk'U carried In- men who had removed themselves be- 
yond :ill the restraints that even seeni to distinguish 
privateering from piracy. They were often overstocked 
with vessels and booty, but they seem never to have been 
embarrassed with the care of prisoners. 

There lived at this time, in Xew Orleans, John and 
Pierre Lafitte. John, the younger, l)ut more conspicuous 
of the two, was a handsome man, fair, with black hair 
and eyes, wearing his beard, as the fashion was, shaven 
neatly away from the front of his face. His manner was 
generally courteous, though he was irascible and in graver 
moments somewhat harsh, lie spoke liuently English, 
Spanish, Italian, and French, using them with much af- 
fability at the hotel where he resided, and indicating, in 
the peculiarities of his French, his nativity in the cit}' of 
Bordeaux. 

The elder brother was a seafaring man and had served 
in the French navy. He appears to have been every way 
less showy than the other ; but beyond doubt both men 
were above the occupation with which they began life in 
Louisiana. This was the trade of blacksmith, though at 
their forge, on the corner of St. Philip and Bourbon 
Streets, probably none but slave hands swung the sledge 
or shaped the horseshoe. 

It was during the embaro;o, enforced bv the United 
States Government in 1S08, that John Lafitte began to be 
a merchant. His store was in Poyal Street, where, be- 



THE PIRATES OF BARATARIA. 167 

hind a show of legitimate trade, he was busy running the 
embargo with goods and Africans. He wore the disguise 
carelessly. He was cool and intrepid and had only the 
courts to evade, and his unlawful adventures did not lift 
his name from the published lists of managers of society 
balls or break his acquaintance with prominent legislators. 

In 1810 came the AVest Indian refugees and the Guad- 
aloupian privateers. The struggle between the ISTorth 
American and the West Indian ideas of public order and 
morals took new energy on the moment. The plans of 
the "set of bandits who infested the coast and overran 
the country " were described by Government as " exten- 
sive and well laid," and the confession made that " so gen- 
eral seemed the disposition to aid in their concealment, 
that but faint hopes were entertained of detecting the 
parties and bringing them to justice." 

Their trade was impudently open. Merchants gave and 
took orders for their goods in the streets of the town as 
frankly as for the merchandise of Philadelphia or ISTew 
York. Frequent seizures lent zest to adventure without 
greatly impairing the extravagant profits of a commerce 
that paid neither duties nor first cost. 

John and Pierre Lafitte became the commercial agents 
of the " privateers." By and by they were their actual 
chiefs. They won great prosperity for the band ; prizes 
were rich and frequent, and slave cargoes profitable. 
John Lafitte did not at this time go to sea. He equipped 
vessels, sent them on their cruises, sold their prizes and 



1G8 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

slaves, and moved liithcr and thither throughout tlio 
Delta, adininisteriug affairs with boldness and sagacit}-. 
The Mississippi's "coasts" in the parishes of St. James 
and St. John the Baptist were often astir with his known 
presence, and his smaller vessels sometimes pierced the 
interior as far as Lac des Allemands. lie knew the value 
of popular admiration, and was often at country halls, 
where he enjoyed the fame of great riches and courage, 
and seduced many of the simple Acadian youth to sail 
in his cruises. His two principal captains were Beluche 
and Dominique You. "Captain Dominique" was small, 
graceful, fair, of a pleasant, even attractive face, and a 
skilful sailor. There were also Gambi, a handsome Ital- 
ian, wdio died only a few years ago at the old pirate village 
of Chenicre Caminada ; and Bigoult, a dark Frenchman, 
whose ancient house still stands on Grande Isle. And 
yet again Johnness and Johannot, unless — wdiich appears 
likely — these were only the I'eal names of Dominique and 
Beluche. 

Expeditions went out against these men more than 
once ; but the Government was pre-occupied and embar- 
rassed, and the expeditions seemed feebly conceived. 
Tliey only harassed the Baratarians, drove them to the 
mouth of La Fourche in vessels too well armed to be at- 
tacked in transports, and did not prevent their prompt re- 
turn to Grande Terre. 

The revolution for the independence of the Colombian 
States of South America beffan. Venezuela declared her 



THE PIRATES OF BARATARIA. 169 

independence in Jnly, 1811. The Baratarians procured 
letters of marque from the patriots in Carthagena, low- 
ered the French flag, ran up the new standard, and thus 
far and no farther Joined the precarious fortunes of the 
new states, while Barataria continued to be their haunt 
and booty their only object. 

They reached the height of their fortune in 1813. 
Their moral condition had declined in proportion. 
"Among them," says the Governor, "are some St. Do- 
mingo negroes of the most desperate character, and no 
worse than most of their white associates." Their 
avowed purpose, he says, was to cruise on the high seas 
and commit " depredations and piracies on the vessels of 
nations in peace with the United States." 

One of these nations M^as the British. Its merchant- 
men were captured in the Gulf and sold behind Grande 
Ten-e. The English more than once sought redress with 
their own powder and shot. On the 23d of June, 1813, 
a British sloop-of-war anchored off the outer end of the 
channel at the mouth of La Fourche and sent her boats to 
attack two privateers lying under the lee of Cat Island ; 
but the pirates stood ground and repulsed them with con- 
siderable loss. 

Spain, England, and the United States were now their 
enemies ; yet they grew bolder and more outrageous. 
Smuggling increased. The Government was " set at defi- 
ance in broad daylight." " I remember," reads a manu- 
script kindly furnished the present writer, " when thi-ee 



170 THE CKEOLES OF LOIISIAXA. 

Spanish vessels were brought in to Caillou Islands. They 
were laden with a certain Spanish wine, and the citizens 
of Attakapas went out to see them and purchased part of 
the captured cargoes. There were no traces of the former 
crews." 

In October, 1813, a revenue officer seized some contra- 
band goods near Jsew Orleans. He was fired upon ]>y a 
party under John Lafitte, one of liis men wounded, and 
the goods taken from him. The Governor offered $;500 
for Lafitte's apprehension, but without avail. 

In January, 1814, four hundred and fifteen negroes, 
consigned to John and Pierre Lafitte, were to be auc- 
tioned at " The Temple." An inspector of customs and 
twelve men were stationed at the spot. John Lafitte at- 
tacked them, killed the inspector, wounded two men, and 
made the rest prisoners. 

Still he was not arrested. His island was fortified, his 
schooners and feluccas were swift, his men were well or- 
ganized and numbered four hundred, the Federal Govern- 
ment was getting the worst of it in war with Great 
Britain, and, above all, the prevalence of West Indian 
ideas in Kew Orleans was a secure shelter. He sent his 
spoils daily up La Fourche to Donaldsonville on the Mis- 
sissippi, and to other points. Strong, well-armed escorts 
protected them. Claiborne asked the legislature to raise 
one hundred men for six months' service. The request 
was neglected. At the same time a filibustering expedi- 
tion against Texas was only stopped by energetic meas- 



THE PIRATES OF BARATARIA. 171 

ures. The Federal courts could effect nothing. An ex- 
pedition captured both Lafittes, but thej disappeared, and 
the writs were returned " not found." 

But now the tide turned. Society began to repudiate 
the outlaws. In July, 1814, a grand jury denounced 
them as pirates, and exhorted the people " to remove the 
stain that has fallen on all classes of society in the minds 
of the good people of the sister States." Indictments 
were found against Johnness and Johannot for piracies in 
the Gulf, and against Pierre Lafitte as accessory. Lafitte 
was arrested, bail was refused, and he found himself at 
last shut up in the calaboza. 



XXV. 

BARATARIA DESTROYED. 

TTTEIGIIIXG all the facts, it is small wonder that the 
Delta Creoles coquetted with the Baratarians. To 
say no more of Spanish American or French West Indian 
tincture, there was the Embargo. There were the war- 
ships of Europe skimming ever to and fro in the en- 
trances and exits of the Gulf. Rarely in days of French 
or Spanish rule had this purely agricultural country and 
non-manufacturing town been so removed to the world's 
end as just at this time. The Mississippi, northward, was 
free ; but its perils had hardly lessened since the days 
of Spanish rule. Then it was said, in a curious old "West- 
ern advertisement of 1797, whose English is worthy of 
notice : 

" No danger need be apprehended from the enemy, as every person 
whatever will be under cover, made proof against rifle or musket balls, 
and convenient port-holes for firing out of. Each of the boats are 
armed with six pieces, carry a pound ball, also a number of muskets, 
and amply supplied with plenty of ammunition, strongly manned with 
choice hands, and masters of approved knowledge." 



BARATARIA DESTROYED. 173 

Scarcely any journey, now, outside of Asia, Africa, and 
the Polar seas, is more arduous than was then the trip 
from St. Louis to New Orleans. Vagabond Indians, white 
marauders, Spanish-armed extortion and arrest, and the 
natural perils of the stream, made the river little, if any, 
less dangerous than the Gulf. Culbert and Maglibi-ay 
were the baser Laiittes of the Mississippi, and Cotton- 
wood Creek their Barataria. 

And the labors and privations were greater than the 
dangers. The conveyances were keel-boats, barges, and 
jflat-boats. The flat-boats, at l^ew Orleans, were broken 
up for their lumber, their slimy gunwales forming along 
the open gutter's edge in many of the streets a narrow 
and treacherous substitute for a pavement. The keel- 
boats and barges returned up-stream, propelled now by 
sweeps and now by warping or by cordelle (hand tow- 
ropes), consuming " three or four months of the most 
painful toil that can be imagined." Exposure and bad 
diet " ordinarily destroyed one-third of the crew." 

But on the lOtli of January, 1812, there had pushed in 
to the landino; at New Orleans a skv-blue thing with a 

O I/O 

long bowsprit, " built after the fashion of a ship, with port- 
holes in the side," and her cabin in the hold. She was 
the precursor of the city's future greatness, the Orleans, 
from Pittsburg, the first steam vessel on the Mississippi. 

Here was a second freedom of the great river mightier 
than that wrested from Spain. Commercial grandeur 
seemed just at hand. All Spanish America was asserting 



174 THE CIIEOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

its independence ; AVliitney's genius was making cotton 
tlic world's greatest staple ; innnigi'ants were swarming 
into the West ; the Mississippi valley would be the pro- 
vision-house of Europe, the importer of untold millions of 
manufactures ; New Orleans would keep the only gate. 
Instead of this, in June, 1812, Congress declared war 
against Great Britain. Barataria seemed indispensable, 
and New Orleans was infested with dangers. 

In 1813, "Wilkinson, still conunanding in the West, 
marched to Mobile Kiver ; in April he drove the Span- 
iards out of Fort Charlotte and raised a small fortification, 
Fort Bowyer, to connnand the entrance of Mobile Bay. 
Thus the Spanish, neighbors only less objectionable than 
the British, were crowded back to Pensacola. But, this 
done, AVilkinson was ordered to the Canadian frontier, 
and even took part of his few regulars with him. 

The English were already in the Gulf ; the Indians 
were growing offensive; in July seven hundred crossed 
the Perdido into Mississippi ; in September they massa- 
cred three hundred and lifty whites at Fort Minnns, and 
opened the Creek war. Within New Orleans bands of 
drunken Choctaws roamed the streets. The Baratarians 
■were seen daily in the public resorts. Incendiary fires be- 
came alarmingly common, and the hatture troubles again 
sprang np. Naturally, at such a junction, Lafitte and his 
men reached the summit of power. 

In February, 1814, four hundred country militia re- 
ported at Magazine Barracks, opposite New Orleans. The 



BARATAKIA DESTROYED. 175 

Governor tried to force out the city militia. He got only 
clamorous denunciation and refusal to obey. The country 
muster offered their aid to enforce the order. The city 
companies heard of it, and only Claiborne's discreetness 
averted the mortifying disaster of a battle without an 
enemy. The country militia, already deserting, was dis- 
banded. Even the legislature withheld its support, and 
Claiborne was everywhere denounced as a traitor. He 
had to report to the President his complete failure. Still, 
he insisted apologetically, the people were emphatically 
ready to "turn out in case of actual invasion." Only so 
patient a man coiild understand that the Creoles were con- 
scientious in their lethargy. Fortunately the invasion did 
not come imtil the Creek war had brought to view the 
genius of Andrew Jackson. 

In April, Government raised the embargo. But the re- 
lief was tardy ; the banks suspended. "Word came that 
Paris had fallen. Napoleon had abdicated. England 
would throw new vigor into the war with America, and 
could spare troops for the conquest of Louisiana. 

In August the Creeks made peace. Some British 
officers landed at Apalachicola, Florida, bringing artillery. 
Some disaffected Creeks joined them and were by them 
armed and drilled. But now, at length, the Government 
took steps to defend the Southwest. 

General Jackson was given the undertaking. He wrote 
to Claiborne to hold his militia ready to march — an order 
very easy to give. In September he repaired to Mobile, 



17G tup: CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

which Mas ah-eadj threatened. Tlic British Colonel 
Kicholls liad hindcd at Peiiisacola with some companies 
of infantry, from two sloops-of-Mar. The officers from 
Apalachicola and a considerable body of Indians had 
joined him, Avithout objection from the Spaniards. 

Suddenly attention was drawn to the I>ai'atarians. On 
the third of September an armed brii:; had appeared off 
Grande Terre. She fired on an inbound vessel, forcing 
her to run aground, tacked, and presently anchored some 
six miles from shore. Certain of the islanders went off 
in a boat, ventured too near, and, turning to retreat, were 
overhauled by the brig's pinnace, carrying British colors 
and a white flag. In tlie pinnace were two naval officers 
and a captain of infantry. They asked for Mr. Lafitte, 
one officer speaking in French for the other. 

"lie is ashore," said the chief person in the island boat, 
a man of dignified and pleasing address. The officers 
lianded him a packet addressed " To Mr. Lafitte, Bara- 
taria," and asked that it be carefullj'- delivered to him in 
person. The receiver of it, however, induced them to 
continue on, and when they were plainly in his power 
revealed himself. 

" I, myself, am Mr. Lafitte." As they drew near the 
shore, he counselled them to conceal their business from 
his men. More than two hundred Baratarians lined the 
beach clamoring for the arrest of the " spies," but Lafitte 
contrived to get them safely to his dwelling, quieted his 
men, and opened the packet. 



BAEATAKIA DESTEOYED. 177 

There were four papers in it. First, Colonel Nicholls's 
appeal to the Creoles to help restore Louisiana to Spain ; 
to Spaniards, French, Italians, and Britons, to aid in 
abolishing American usurpation ; and to Kentuckians, to 
exchange supplies for money, and neutrality for an open 
Mississippi. Second, his letter to Lafitte offering a naval 
captain's commission to him, lands to all his followers, 
and protection in persons and property to all, if the 
pirates, with their fleet, would put themselves under the 
British naval commander, and announcing the early in- 
vasion of Louisiana with a powerful force. Third, an 
order from the naval commander in Pensacola Bay, to 
Captain Lockyer, the bearer of the packet, to procure res- 
titution at Barataria for certain late piracies, or to "carry 
destruction over the whole place ; " but also repeating 
Colonel I^icholls's overtures. And fourth, a copy of the 
orders under which Captain Lockyer had come. He was 
to secure the Baratarians' cqpoperation in an attack on 
Mobile, or, at all events, their neutrality. According to 
Lafitte, the captain added verbally the offer of $30,000 
and many other showy inducements. 

Lafitte asked time to consider. He withdrew ; when in 
a moment the three officers and their crew were seized by 
the pirates and imprisoned. They were kept in confine- 
ment all night. In the morning Lafitte appeared, and, 
with many apologies for the rudeness of his men, con- 
ducted the officers to their pinnace, and they went off to 

the brig. The same day he addressed a letter to Captain 
13 



.178 THE CKKOLKS OF LOUISIANA. 

Lockycr asking a fortnight to '* put his affairs in order,"' 
when he would be "entirely at his disposal." It is notice- 
able for its polished dignity aiul the ])urity of its Eng- 
lish. 

AVas this anything more than stratagem ? The Span- 
iard and Englishman M'ere his foe and his prey. The 
Creoles were his friends. His own large interests were 
scattered all over Lower Louisiana. His pati-iotism has 
been overpraised ; and yet we may allow him patriotism. 
His whole war, on the main-land side, Avas only with a 
set of ideas not superficially fairer than his own. They 
seemed to him unsuited to the exigencies of the times and 
the country. Thousands of Louisianians thought as he 
did. They and he — to borrow from a distance the phrase 
of another — were "polished, agreeable, dignified, averse 
to baseness and vulgarity." They accepted friendship, 
honor, an*! party faith as sufiicient springs of action, and 
only dispensed with the sterner question of right and 
wrong. True, Pierre, his brother, and Dominique, his 
most intrepid captain, lay then in the calaboza. Yet 
should he, so able to take care of himself against all 
comers and all fates, so scornful of all subordination, for 
a paltry captain's commission and a doubtful thirty thou- 
sand, help his life-time enemies to invade the comitry and 
city of his commercial and social intimates ? 

He sat down and penned a letter to his friend Blan(pie, 
of the legislature, and sent the entire British packet, ask- 
ing but one favor, the " amelioration of the situation of 



I5AKATAKIA DESTROYED. 179 

his unhappy brother ; " and the next morning one of the 
New Orleans papers contained the following advertise- 
ment : 

$1,000 REWARD 

Will be paid for the appreliending of Pierre Lafitte, who broke 
and escaped hist night from the prison of the parish. Said Pierre La- 
fitte is about five feet ten inclies lieight, stout made, light comi^lexion, 
and somewhat cross-eyed, further description is considered unneces- 
sary, as he is very well known in the city. 

Said Lafitte took with him three negroes, to wit : [giving their names 
and those of their owners] ; the above reward will be paid to any per- 
son delivering the said Lafitte to the subscriber. 

J. H. Holland, 

Keeper of the Prison. 

On the Tth, John Lafitte wrote again to Blanque, — the 
British brig and two sloops-of-war still hovered in the 
oflEing, — should he make overtures to the United States 
Government ? Blanque's advice is not known ; but on 
the 10th, Lafitte made such overtures by letter to Clai- 
borne, inclosed in one from Pierre Lafitte — who had 
joined him — to M. Blanque. 

The outlawed brothers offered themselves and their 
men to defend Barataria, asking only oblivion of the past. 
The high-spirited periods of John Lafitte challenge ad- 
miration, even while thej- betray tinges of sophistry that 
may or may not have been apparent to their writer. 
"All tlie offence I have committed," wrote he, "I was 
forced to by certain vices in our laws." He did not say 



180 THE CliEOLKS OF LOUISIANA. 

that these vices consisted iiuiijily of eiuictinents agiiiiist 
smuggling, piracy, and the slave-trade. 

The heads of the small naval and military force then 
near Xew Orleans were Commodore Paterson and Colonel 
Koss. They had organized and were hnri'iedly preparing 
a descent npon the IJaratarians. A general of the Creole 
militia was Villere, son of the unhappy patriot of 1708. 
Claiborne, with these three officers, met in council, with 
the Lafittes' letters and the British overtures before themj 
and debated the question whether the pirates' services 
should be accepted. Claiborne being in the chair Avas not 
called upon for a vote. It would be interesting to know, 
what, with his now thorough knowledge of the Creole 
character and all the expediencies of the situation, his vote 
would have been. Villere voted yea, but Ross and Pater- 
son stoutly nay, and thus it was decided. 2sor did the 
British send ashore for Lafitte's final answer. They only 
lingered distantly for some days and then vanished. 

Presently the expedition of Poss and Paterson was 
ready. Stealing down the Mississippi, it was joined at 
the mouth by some gun-vessels, sailed westward into the 
Gulf, and headed for Barataria. There was the schooner 
Carolina, six gun-vessels, a tender, and a launch. On the 
16th of September they sighted Grande Terre, formed in 
line of battle, and stood for the entrance of the bay. 

Within the harbor, behind the low island, the pirate 
fleet was soon descried forming in line. Counting all, 
schooners and feluccas, there were ten vessels. Two miles 



BAllATARIA DESTROYED. 183 

from shore the Carolina was stopped by slioal water, and 
tlie two heavier gun- vessels grounded. But armed boats 
were launched, and the attack entered the pass and moved 
on into the harbor. 

Soon two of the Baratarians' vessels were seen to be on 
fire ; another, attempting to escape, grounded, and the 
pirates, except a few brave leaders, were flying. One of 
the fired vessels burned, the other was boarded and saved, 
the one which grounded got off again and escaped. All 
the rest were presently captured. At this moment, a fine, 
fully armed schooner appeared outside tlie island, was 
chased and taken. Scarcely was this done when another 
showed herself to eastward. The Carolina gave chase. 
The stranger stood for Grande Terre, and ran into water 
where the Carolina could not follow. Four boats were 
launched ; whereupon the chase opened fire on the Caro- 
lina, and the gun-vessels in tui-n upon the chase, firing 
across the island from inside, and in half an hour she sur- 
rendered. She proved to be the General Bolivar, armed 
with one eighteen, two twelve, and one six-pounder. 

The nest was broken up. " x\ll their buildings and es- 
tablishments at Grande Terre and Grand Isle, with their 
telegraph and stores at Cheniere Caminada, were de- 
stroyed. On the last day of September, the elated squad- 
ron, with their prizes — seven cruisers of Lafitte, and three 
armed schooners under Carthagenian colors — arrived in 
New Orleans harbor amid the peal of guns from the old 
barracks and Fort St. Charles. 



184 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

But among the prisoners the commanding coimtenance 
of Jolm Lafitte and the cross-eyed visage of liis brother 
Piei-re were not to Ije seen. Both men had escaped np 
Bayou La Fourche to the " German Coast." Others mIio 
had had like fortune by and by gathered on Last Island, 
some sixty )niles Avest of Grande Terre, and others found 
asylum in Xew Orleans, M'here they increased the fear of 
internal disorder. 



XXVI. 

THE BRITISH INVASION. 

TDATEESON and lloss had struck the Baratarians just 
in time. The fortnight asked of the British by La- 
fitte expired the next day. The British themselves were 
far away eastward, drawing off from an engagement of 
the day before, badly worsted. A force of seven liundred 
British troops, six hundred Indians, and four vessels of 
war had attacked Fort Bowyer, commanding the en- 
trances of Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound. Its small 
garrison had repulsed them and they retired again to Pen- 
sacola with serious loss, including a sloop-of-war grounded 
and burned. 

I^ow General Jackson gathered four thousand men on 
the Alabama Biver, regulars, Tennesseeans, and Missis- 
sippi dragoons, and early in November attacked Pensacola 
with great spirit, took the two forts — which the Spaniards 
had allowed the English to garrison — drove the English 
to their shipping and the Indians into the interior, and 
returned to Mobile. Here he again called on Claiborne 
to muster his militia. Claiborne convened the Legislature 
and laid the call before it. 



ISC) THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

His was not the master-spirit to cominand a people so 
different from himself in a moment of extremity. On 
every side was discord, apprehension, and despondency 
that he could not cure. Two committees of safety en- 
t^aged in miserable disputes. Credit was destroyed. 
Money connnanded three or four per cent, a month. 
The Legislature dawdled until the Louisianian himself 
uttered a nohlc protest. " No other evidence of patriot- 
ism is to be found," cried Louallier, of Opelousas, " than a 
disposition to avoid every expense, every fatigue." 

It was easy to count up the resources of defence : Pat- 
erson's feeble navy, the weak Fort St. Philip on the 
river, tlie unfinished Fort Petites Cbquilles on the Rigo- 
lets, Ross's seven hundred regulars, a thousand militia 
mustered at last after three imperative calls, a Avretchedly 
short supply of ammunition — nothing more. " Our situ- 
ation," says La Carriere Latour in liis admirable memoir, 
"seemed desperate." Twelve thousand chosen British 
troops were known to have sailed for Louisiana. 

But suddenly, one day, the first of winter, confidence 
returned ; enthusiasm sprang up ; all was changed in a 
moment by the arrival of one man, whose spare form 
thrilled everything with its electric energy. He reviewed 
the Creole troops, and praised their equipment and drill ; 
he inspected their forts ; he was ill, but he was every- 
where ; and everyone who saw that intense eye, that un- 
furrowed but fixed brow, the dry locks falling down over 
it as if blown there by hard riding, and the two double 



THE BKITISII INVASION. 187 

side lines wliicli his overwhelming and perpetual " must 
and shall " had dug at either corner of his firm but pas- 
sionate mouth, recognized the master of the hour, and 
emulated his confidence and activity. Like the Creoles 
themselves, brave, impetuous, patriotic, and a law unto 
himself, and yet supplying the qualities they lacked, the 
continent could hardly have furnished a man better fitted 
to be their chief in a day of peril than was Andrew Jack- 
son. 

Soon the whole militia of city and State were added to 
the first thousand, organized and ready to march. There 
was another spring to their tardy alacrity. Eighty British 
ships, it was said, were bearing down toward Ship Island. 
Cochrane, the scourge of the Atlantic coast, was admiral 
of the fleet. On the 14th of December forty-five barges, 
carrying forty-three guns and one thousand two hundred 
British troops, engaged the weak American flotilla of six 
small vessels near the narrow passes of Lake Borgne. 
There was a short, gallant struggle, and the British were 
masters of the lake and its shores. 

Even then the Legislature pronounced against Clai- 
borne's recommendation that it declare martial law and 
adjourn. But Jackson instantly proclaimed it in ringing 
words. " The district's safety," he said, " must and will be 
maintained with the best blood of the country," and he 
would " separate the country's friends from its enemies." 

Measures of defence were pushed on. Forts and stock- 
ades were manned, new companies and battalions were 






188 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

mustered, among them one of Choctaw Indians and two 
of free men of color. The jails were emptied to swell 
the ranks. 

And hereupon John Lafitte, encouraged by Claiborne 
and the Legislature, came forward again. Jackson in one 
of his proclamations had called the Baratarians "hellish 
banditti," whose aid he spurned. But now these two in- 
trepid leaders met face to face in a room that may still be 
pointed out in the old cabildo, and the services of Lafitte 
and his skilled artillerists were offered and accepted for 
the defence of the city. All proceedings against them 
were suspended ; some were sent to man the siege-guns 
of Forts Petites Coquilles, St. John, and St. Philip, and 
others were enrolled in a body of artillery under " Cap- 
tains" Beluche and Dominique. One of the General's 
later reports alludes to the Baratarians as " these gentle- 
men." 



XXVIL 

THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 

/~\XCE more the Creoles sang the "Marseillaise." The 
^"'^ invaders hovering along the marshy shores of Lake 
Borgne were fom'teen thousand strong. Sir Edward 
Packenham, brother-in-law to the Duke of Wellington, 
and a gallant captain, was destined to lead them. Gibbs, 
Lambert, and Ivean were his generals of division. As to 
Jackson, thirty-seven hundred Tennesseeans under Gen- 
erals Coffee and Carroll, had, when it was near Christmas, 
given him a total of but six thousand men. Yet confi- 
dence, animation, concord, and even gaiety, filled the 
hearts of the mercurial people. 

"The citizens," says the eye-witness, Latour, "were 
preparing for battle as cheerfully as for a party of plea- 
sure. The streets resounded with ' Yankee Doodle,' 
' La Marseillaise,' ' Le Chant du Depart,' and other 
martial airs. The fair sex presented themselves at the 
windows and balconies to applaud the troops going 
through their evolutions, and to encourage their hus- 
bands, sons, fathers, and brothers to protect them from 
their enemies." 



100 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

That enemy, reconnoitring on Lake Borgne, soon 
found in the marshes of its extreme western end the 
mouth of a navigable stream, the Bayou Bienvenue. 
Tliis water Howed into the lake directly from the west — 
the direction of Xew Orleans, close behind whose lower 
suburl) it had its beginning in a dense cypress swamp. 
Within its mouth it was over a liundred yards wide, and 
more than six feet deep. As they ascended its waters, 
everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, stretched only 
the unbroken quaking prairie. But soon they found and 
bribed a village of Spanish and Italian fishermen, and 
under their guidance explored the whole region. By 
turning into a smaller bayou, a branch of the first, the 
Mississippi was found a very few miles away on the left, 
hidden from view by a narrow belt of swamp and hurry- 
ing soutlieastward toward the Gulf. F'rom the plantations 
of sugar-cane on its border, various draining canals ran 
back nortliM'ard to the bayou, offering on their margins 
a fair though narrow walking way through the wooded 
and vine-tangled morass to the open plains on the river 
shore, just below Xew Orleans. By some oversight, 
which has never been explained, this easy route to the 
city's very outskirts had been left unobstructed. On the 
21st of December some Creole scouts posted a picket at 
the fishermen's village. 

The traveller on the Xew Orleans & Mobile Eailroad, 
as he enters the southeastern extreme of Louisiana, gliding 
along the low, wet prairie margin of the Gulf, passes 



THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEAXS. 191 

across an island made bj the two mouths of Pearl River. 
It rises just high enough above the surrounding marsh 
to be at times tolerably dry ground. A sportsmen's sta- 
tion on it is called English Look-out ; but the island itself 
seems to have quite lost its name. It was known then as 
Isle aux Poix (Pea Island). Here on December the 21st, 
ISltt, the British had been for days disembarking. Early 
on the 22d General Kean's division re-embarked from this 
island in barges, shortly before dawn of the 23d captured 
the picket at the fishers' village, pushed on up the bayou, 
turned to the left, southwestward, into the smaller bayou 
(Mazant), entered the swamp, disembarked once more at 
the luouth of a plantation canal, marched southward along 
its edge through the wood, and a little before noon emerged 
upon the open plain of the river shore, scarcely seven 
miles from jSTew Orleans, without a foot of fortification 
between them and the city. But the captured pickets had 
reported Jackson's forces eighteen thousand strong, and 
the British halted, greatly fatigued, lentil they should be 
joined by other divisions. 

Xot, however, to rest. At about two o'clock in the 
afternoon, while the people of the city were sitting at 
their midday dinner, suddenly the cathedral bell startled 
them with its notes of alarm, drums sounded the long-roll, 
and as military equipments were hurriedly put on, and 
Creoles, Americans, and San Domingans, swords and mus- 
kets in hand, poured in upon the Place d'Armes from 
every direction and sought their places in the ranks, word 



192 TIIF CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

passt'tl from luoulli to innutli that there had l>c'oii a hhiii- 
der, and that the enemy was but seven miles away in 
force — " sur VhabiUition Y'dlere ! " — " on A'illere's planta- 
tion ! " Put courage Avas in every heart. Quickly the 
lines were formed, the standards "vvere unfurled, the huzza 
resounded as the well-known white horse of Jackson came 
galloping down their front with his staff— Edward Living- 
ston and Abner Duncan among tliem — at his heels, the 
drums sounded quickstep and the columns moved down 
throu2;h the streets and out of the anxious town to meet 
the foe. In half an hour after the note of alarm the 
Seventh regulars, with two pieces of artillery and some 
marines, had taken an advanced position. An hour and 
a half later General Coffee, with his Tennessee and Missis- 
sippi cavalry, took their place along the small Kodriguez 
canal, that ran from the river's levee to and into the 
swamp, and which afterward became Jackson's permanent 
line of defence. Just as the sun was setting the troops 
that had been stationed at Bayou St. John, a battalion of 
free colored men, then the Forty-fourth regulars, and then 
the brightly uniformed Creole battalion, first came into 
town by way of the old Bayou Road, and swept through the 
streets toward the enemy on the run, glittering with accou- 
trements and arms, under the thronged balconies and amid 
the tears and plaudits of Creole mothers and daughters. 

Night came on, very dark. The Carolina dropped noise- 
lessly down opposite the British camp, anchored close in 
shore, and opened her broadsides and musketry at short 



THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 193 

range. A moment later Jackson fell upon the startled 
foe with twelve hundred men and two pieces of artillery, 
striking them fii'st near the river shore, and presently 
along their whole line. Coffee, with six hundred men, 
unseen in the darkness, issued from the woods on the 
north, and attacked the British right, just as it was trying 
to turn Jackson's left — Creole troops, whose ardor would 
have led them to charge with the hayonet, but for the 
prudence of the Kegular officer in command. A fog rose, 
the smoke of battle rested on the field, the darkness thick- 
ened, and all was soon in confusion. Companies and bat- 
talions — red coats, blue coats. Highland plaidies, and 
" dirty shirts " (Tennesseeans), from time to time got lost, 
fired into friendly lines, or met their foes in hand to hand 
encounters. Out in the distant prairie behind the swamp 
forest the second division of the British coming on, heard 
the battle, hurried forward, and began to reach the spot 
while the low plain, wrapped in darkness, M'as still flashing 
with the discharge of artillery. 

The engagement M'as soon over, without special results 
beyond that prestige which we may be confident was, at 
the moment, Jackson's main aim. Before day he fell back 
two miles, and in the narrowest part of the plain, some 
four miles from town, began to make his permanent line 
behind Rodriguez Canal. 

Inclement weather set in, increasing the hardships of 
friend and foe. The British toiled incessantly in the 
miry ground of the sugar-cane fields to bring up their 



]S)4 TIIH niEOLES OF LOUISIAXA. 

lieavy artillerv, and both sides erected breastworks and 
batteries, and hurried forward their re-enforccnients. 
Skirniisliing was frecjuent, and to Jackson's i"aw levies 
very vahiable. Red-hot shot iioiu the British works de* 
stroyed the Carul'tna y but her ariuanicnt was saved and 
made a shore battery on tliefartlicr river bank. On Kew 
Year's day a few bales of cotton, forming part of the 
American fortifications, were scattered in all directions and 
set on lire, and this was the first and last use nuvde of this 
material during the campaign. AVhen it had been called 
to General Jackson's notice that this cotton Avas the prop- 
ert}' of a foreigner, — " Give him a gun and let him defend 
it," was his answer. On the -ith, two thousand two hun- 
dred and fifty Kentuckians, poorly clad and worse armed 
arrived, and such as bore serviceable weapons raised Jack- 
son's force to three thousand two hundred men on his main 
line ; a line, says the Duke of Saxe- Weimar, '• the very fee- 
blest an engineer could have devised, that is, a straight one." 
Yet on this line the defenders of ]S'ew Orleans were 
about to be victorious. It consisted of half a mile of very 
uneven earthworks stretching across the plain along the 
inner edge of the canal, from the river to the edge of the 
wood, and continuing a like distance into the forest. In 
here it quickly dwindled to a mere double row of logs two 
feet apart, tilled in between with earth. The entire artil- 
lery on this whole line Avas twelve pieces. But it was 
served by men of rare skill, artillerists of the regular army, 
the sailors of the burnt Carolina, some old French soldiers 



THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 



195 



under Flaujeac one of Bonaparte's gunners, and Dominique 
and Beluclie, with tlie tried cannoneers of their pirate ships. 
From battery to battery the rude lino was filled out 
with a droll confusion of arms and trappings, men and 
dress. Here on the extreme right, just on and under 
the levee, were some regular infantry and a company of 
" Orleans Rifles,'' with some dragoons who served a how- 




itzer. Next to them was a battalion of Louisiana Cre- 
oles in gay and varied uniforms. The sailors of the Caro- 
lina were grouped around the battery between. In the 
Creoles' midst were the swarthy privateers with their two 
twenty-fours. Then came a battalion of native men of 
color, another bunch of sailors around a thirty-two- 
pounder, a battalion of St. Domingan mulattoes, a stretch 



lOG THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

of Line for some regular artillery and the Forty-fourth in- 
fantry, then Flaujeac and his Francs behind a brass 
twelve-pounder ; next, a long slender line of brown home- 
spun liunting-shirts that draped Carroll's lank Tennes- 
seeans, then a small, bright bunch of marines, then some 
more regular artillery behind a long brass culverine and a 
six-pounder, then AdaiFs ]-agged Kentuckians, and at the 
end. Coffee's Tennesseeans, disappearing in the swamp, 
where they stood by day knee-deej) in water and slept at 
night in the mud. 

Wintry rains had retarded everything in the British 
camp, but at length Lambert's division came up, Packen- 
liam took command, and plans were perfected for the 
final attack. A narrow continuation of the canal by 
which the English had come up through the swamp to 
its head at the rear of Yillere's plantation was dug, so that 
their boats could be floated up to the river front close 
under the back of the levee, and then dragged over its 
top and launched into the river. The squalid negresses 
that fish for crawfish along its rank, flowery banks still 
call it, "Cannal Packin'am." All night of the Tth of 
January there came to the alert ears of the Americans 
across the intervening plain a noise of getting boats 
through this narrow passage. It was evident that the 
decisive battle was impending. Packenham's intention 
was to throw a considerable part of his force across the 
river to attack the effective marine battery abreast of the 
American line, erected there by Commodore Paterson, 



THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 



197 



while he, on the hither shore, unembarrassed by its fire 
on his flank, should fall furiously upon Jackson's main 
line, in three perpendicular columns. 

But the river had fallen. Colonel Thornton, who Avas 
to lead the movement on the farther bank, was long get- 
ting his boats across the levee. The current, too, was far 
swifter than it had seemed. Eight priceless hours slipped 
awav and onlv a tliii'd of the intended force crossed. 




Packenham's Headquarters (from -the rear). 



A little before daybreak of the Sth, the British main 
force moved out of camp and spread across the plain, six 
thousand strong, the Americans in front, the river on 
their left, and the swamp-forest on their right. They had 
planned to begin at one signal the three attacks on the 
nearer and the one on the farther shore. The air was 
chilly and obscure, A mist was slowly clearing off from 
the wet and slippery ground. A dead silence reigned ; 
but in that mist and silence their enemy was waiting for 



198 THE ClfKOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

them. Presently day broke ami rapidly brightened, the 
mist lifted a little and the i-ed lines of the British were fit- 
fully descried from the American works. Outside the levee 
the wide river and farther shore were quite hidden by the 
fog, which now and tlien floated hitherward over the land. 

Packenham was listening for the attack of Colonel 
Thornton on the opposite baidc, that was to relieve his 
main assault from tlie cross-fire of Paterson's marine bat- 
tery. The sun rose; but he heard iiotliing. J le waited 
till half-past seven ; still there was no sound. 

Meanwhile the Americans lay in their long trench, 
peering over their sorry breastworks, and wondering 
at the inaction. Put at length Pa6kenhara could wait no 
longer. A British rocket went np near the swamp. It 
was the signal for attack. A single cannon-shot answered 
from the Americans, and the artillery on both sides 
opened wdth a frightful roar. On Jackson's extreme left, 
some black troops of the British force made a feint 
against the line in the swam]) and were easily repulsed. 
On his right, near the river, the eneniy charged in solid 
column, impetuously, upon a redoubt just in advance of 
the line. Twice only the redoubt could reply, and the 
British were over and inside and pressing on to scale the 
breastM-ork behind. Their brave and much-loved Colonel 
Pennie was leading them. But on the top of the works 
he fell dead with the hurrah on his lips, and they were 
driven back and out of the redoubt in confusion. 

Meantime the main attack was being made in the open 



THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 199 

plain near the edge of the swamp. Some four hundred 
yards in front of the American works hiy a ditch. Here 
the English formed in close column of about sixty men 
front. They should have laid off their heavy knapsacks, 
for they were loaded besides with big fascines of ripe 
sugar-cane for filling up the American ditch, and with 
scaling ladders. But with nniskets, knapsacks and all, 
they gave three cheers and advanced. Before them went 
a shower of Congreve rockets. For a time: tliey. were 
partly covered by an arm of the forest and by the fog, but 
soon they emerged from both and moved steadily forward 
in perfect ordei-, literally led to the slaughter in the brave 
old British way. 

" Where are yon going ? " asked one English officer of 
another. 

" I'll be hanged if I know." 

" Then," said the first, " you have got into what I call 
a good thing ; a far-famed American battery is in front 
of you at a short range, and on the left of this spot is 
flanked, at eight hundred yards, by their batteries on the 
opposite side of the river." 

",The first objects we saw, enclosed as it were in this 
little w^orld of mist," says this eye-witness, " were the can- 
non-balls tearing up the ground and crossing one another, 
and bounding along like so many cricket-balls through the 
air, coming on our left flank from the American batteries 
on the right bank of the river, and also from their lines in 
front." 



200 THE C'UKOLKS OF LOUISIANA. 

The musketry lire of tlie Aiuericuns, as well as the ar- 
tillery, was given with terrible precision. Unhappily for 
the Enirlish tliev had siiiirltHl (.xit for their attack those 
homely-clad men whom they had nick-named the " Dirty- 
shirts,-' — the riflemen of Kentucky and Tennessee— In- 
dian fighters, that never fired but on a selected victim. 
Flaujeac's battery tore out whole files of men. Yet the 
brave foe came on, veterans from the Cape of Good Hope 
and from the Spanish Peninsula, firmly and measuredly, 
and a few platoons had even i-eached the canal, when the 
column faltered, gave way, and fied precipitately back to 
the ditch where it had first formed. 

Here there was a rally. The knapsacks were taken oif. 
lie-enforcements came up. The first charge had been a 
dreadful mistake in its lack of speed. Xow the start was 
quicker and in less order, but again in the fatal cohimnar 
form. 

" At a run," writes the participant already quoted, " we 
neared the American line. The mist was now rapidly 
clearing away, but, owing to the dense smoke, we could 
not at first distinguish the attacking column of the British 
troops to our right. . . . The echo from the can- 
nonade and nnisketry was so tremendous in the forests 
that the vibration seemed as if the earth were cracking 
and tumbling to pieces. . . . The flashes of fire 
looked as if coming out of the bowels of the earth, so little 
above its surface were the batteries of the Americans." 

Packeuham led the van. On a black horse, in brilliant 



THE BATTLE OF NEW OKLEANS. 201 

uniform, waving his hat and clieering the onset, he was a 
mark the backwoodsmen could not miss. Soon he reeled 
and fell from his horse with a mortal wound ; Gibbs fol- 
lowed him. Then Kean was struck and borne from the 
field with many others of high rank, and the column again 
recoiled and fell back, finally discomfited. 

" Did you ever see such a scene ? " cried one of Packen- 
ham's staff. " There is nothing left but the Seventh and 
Forty-third ! '' 



The Battle-Ground. 



" They fell," says another Englishman, " like the very 
blades of grass beneath the scythe of the mower. Seven- 
teen hundred and eighty-one victims, including three 
generals, seven colonels, and seventy-five lesser officers, 
wei'e the harvest of those few minutes." 

At length the American musketry ceased. Only the bat- 
teries were answering shot for shot, when from the further 
side of the Mississippi came, all too late, a few reports of 



202 THE CKKOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

cannon, a short, brisk rattle of fire-arnis, a liusli, and three 
British clioers to tell that the few raw American troops on 
that side had been overpowered, and that Paterson's bat- 
tery, prevented from defending itself by the bhmdering of 
the militia in its front, had been spiked and abandoned. 

The batteries of the British line continned to tire nntil 
two in the afternoon ; bnt from the first signal of the morn- 
ing to the abandonment of all effort to storm the American 
works was bnt one hour, and the battle of New Orleans 
was over at half-past eight. Genei'al Lambert reported 
the British loss two thousand and seventeen ; Jackson, the 
American at six killed and seven wounded. 

From the 9th to the 18tli four British vessels bom- 
barded Fort St. Philip without result; on the morning of 
the 19th the British camp in front of Jackson Avas found 
deserted, and eight days later the last of the enemies' 
forces embarked from the shores of Lake Borgne. 

The scenes of ti'iumplmnt rejoicing, the hastily erected 
arches in the Place d'Armes, the symbolical impersona- 
tions, the myriads of banners and pennons, the columns of 
victorious troo])s, the crowded balconies, the rain of flow«rs 
in a town where fiowers never fail, the huzzas of the 
thronging populace, the salvos of artillery, the garland- 
crowned victor, and the ceremonies of thanksgiving in the 
solemn cathedi-al, form a part that may be entrusted to the 
imagination. One purpose and one consummation made 
one people, and little of sorrow and naught of discord in 
that hour mingled with the joy of deliverance. 



XXVIIT. 

THE END OF THE PIRATES. 

"^^EW OELEANS emerged from the smoke of battle 
comparatively Americanized. Peace followed, or 
rather the tardy news of peace, which had been sealed at 
Ghent more than a fortnight before the battle. With 
peace came open ports. The highways of commercial 
greatness crossed each other in the custom-house, not be- 
hind it as in Spanish or embargo days, and the Baratari- 
ans were no longer esteemed a public necessity. Scattered, 
used, and pardoned, they passed into eclipse — not total, 
but fatally dark where they most desired to shine. The 
ill-founded tradition that the Lafittes were never seen 
after the battle of New Orleans had thus a figurative 
reality. 

In Jackson's general order of January 21st, Captains 
Dominique and Beluche, "with part of their former 
crew," were gratefully mentioned for their gallantry in 
the field, and the brothers Lafitte for " the same courage 
and fidelity." On these laurels Dominique You rested 
and settled down to quiet life in Kew Orleans, enjoying 
the vulgar admiration which is o-iven to the survivor of 



204 



THE ("UF.OLKS OF J.OUISIAXA. 



lawless adventures. It may seem supcrlluous to add that 
he hecatne a leader in waid jiolitics. 

In the spring of 1815, Jackson, for certain imprison- 
ments of men wlio boldly opposed the severity of his pro- 
longed dictatorshij) in New Orleans, was forced at length 




Old Spanish Cottage in Royal Street; Scene of Andrew Jackson's Trial. 

to regard the decrees of court. It was then that the 
" hellish banditti," turned " Jacksonites,'- did their last 
swaggering in the famous Exchange Coffee-house, at the 
corner of St. Louis and Cliartres Streets, and when he was 
lined $1,U00 for contempt of court, aided in drawing his 
carriage by hand through the streets. 



THE END OF THE PIRATES. 205 

Of Belnche or of Pierre Lafitte little or nothing more 
is known. But John Lafitte continued to have a record. 
After the city's deliverance a ball was given to oflScers of 
the army. General Coffee was present. So, too, was La- 
fitte. On their being brought together and introduced, 
the General showed some hesitation of manner, where- 
upon the testy Baratarian advanced haughtily and said, 
with emphasis, " Lafitte, the pirate." Thus, unconsciously, 
it may be, he foretold that part of his life which still lay 
in the future. 

That future belongs properly to the history of Texas. 
Galveston Island had early been one of Lafitte's stations, 
and now became his permanent depot, whence he carried 
on extensive operations, contraband and piratical. His 
principal cruiser was the Jupiter. She sailed under a Tex- 
an commission. Under the filibuster Long, who ruled at 
Kacogdoches, Lafitte became Governor of Galveston. 

An American ship was I'obbed of a quantity of specie 
on the high seas. Shortly afterward the Ju/piter came 
into Galveston with a similar quantity on board. A Unit- 
ed States cruiser accordingly was sent to lay off the coast, 
and watch her manosuvres. Lafitte took offence at this, 
and sent to the American commander to demand explana- 
tion. His letter, marked with more haughtiness, as well 
as with more ill-concealed cunning than his earlier corre- 
spondence with the British and Americans, was not an- 
swered. 

Tu 1818 a storm destroyed four of his fleet. He sent 



206 TJIE Cl{ HOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

one Lafugc to IS'ew Orleans, who l)iouglit out tlicnce a 
new schooner of two guns, manned hy fifty men. He 
presently took a juize; but had hardly done so, when he 
■was met hy the revemic cutter Alabama, answered lier 
challenge with a broadside, engaged lier in a hard battle, 
and only surrendered after lieavy loss. The schooner and 
prize were carried into Bayou St. John, the crew taken to 
?sew Orleans, tried in the United States Court, condemned 
and executed 

Once more Lafitte took the disguise of a Coloml^ian 
commission and fitted out three vessels. The name of one 
is not known. Another was the General Victoria, and a 
third the schooner Blank' — or, we may venture to spell 
it Blanque. lie coasted westward and southward as far 
as Sisal, Yucatan, taking several small prizes, and one that 
was very valuable, a schooner that had been a slaver. 
Thence he turned toward Cape Antonio, Cuba, and in the 
open Gulf disclosed to his followers that his Colombian 
commission had expired. 

Forty-one men insisted on leaving him. lie removed 
the guns of the General Victoria, crippled her rigging, 
and gave her into their hands. They sailed for the Mis- 
sissippi, and after three weeks arrived there and surren- 
dered to the officers of the customs. The Spanish Consul 
claimed the vessel, but she was decided to belong to the 
men who had fitted her out. 

Lafitte Seems now to have become an open pirate. Vil- 
lere. Governor of Louisiana after Claiborne, and the same 



THE END OF THE PIRATES. 2()7 

who had counselled the acceptance of Lafitte's first over- 
tures in 1819, spoke in no measured terms of " those men 
who lately, under the false pretext of serving the cause of 
the Spanish patriots, scoured the Gulf of Mexico, making 
its waves groan," etc. It seems many of them had foun^ 
homes in j^ew Orleans, making it " the seat of disorders 
and crimes which he would not attempt to describe." 

The end of this uncommon man is lost in a confusion 
of improbable traditions. As late as 1822 his name, if not 
his person, was the terror of the Gulf and the Straits of 
Florida. But in that year the United States Navy swept 
those Avaters with vigor, and presently reduced the perils 
of the Gulf — for the first time in its history — to the 
hazard of wind and wave. 

A few steps down the central walk of the middle ceme- 
tery of those that lie along Claiborne Street from Custom- 
house down to Conti, on the right-hand side, stands the 
low, stuccoed tomb of Dominique You. The tablet bears 
his name surmounted by the emblem of Free Masonry: 
Some one takes good care of it. An epitaph below pro- 
claims him, in French verse, the " intrepid hero of a hun- 
dred battles on land and sea ; who, without fear and with- 
out reproach, will one day view, unmoved, the destruction 
of the world." To this spot, in 1830, he was followed on 
his way by the Louisiana Legion (city militia), and laid to 
rest with military honors, at the expense of the town 
council. 

Governor Claiborne left the executive chair in 1816 to 



208 



TIIK CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 



represent the State in the United States Senate. His suc- 
cessor was a Creole, the son, as we have seen, of that fiery 
Villere who in 17()l> had died in Spanish captivity one of 
the very earliest martyrs to the spirit of American free- 



^:J^ 




Tomb of Governor Claiborne's Family. 
[From a Photograph.'] 

dom. Claiborne did not live out the year, but in the win- 
ter died. In the extreme rear of the old St. Louis ceme- 
tery on Basin Street, New Orleans, in an angle of its high 
brick wall, shut off from the rest of the place by a rude, 
low fence of cypress palisades, is a narrow piece of uncon- 



THE END OF THE PIRATES. 209 

secrated ground where the tombs of some of New Orleans' 
noblest dead are huddled together in miserable oblivion. 
Rank weeds and poisonous vines have so choked up the 
whole place, that there is no way for the foot but over the 
tops of the tombs, and one who ventures thus, must be- 
ware of snakes at every step. In the midst of this spot 
is the tomb of Eliza Washington Claiborne, the Gover- 
nor's first wife, of her child of three years who died the 
same day as she, and of his secretary, her brother, of 
twenty-five, who a few months later fell in a duel, the 
rash victim of insults heaped upon his sister s husband 
through the public press. Near by, just within the pick- 
eted enclosure, the sexton has been for years making a 
heap of all manner of grave-yard rubbish, and under that 
pile of old cofl&n planks, broken-glass, and crockery, tin- 
cans, and rotting evergreens, lie the tomb and the ashes of 
William Charles Cole Claiborne, Governor of Louisiana. 
14 



XXIX. 

FAUBOURG STE. MARIE. 

TF one will stand to-daj on the broad levee at Xew Or- 
leans, with his back to the Mississippi, a short way 
out to the left and riverward from the spot where the long- 
vanished little Fort St. Louis once made pretence of guard- 
ing the town's upper liver cornei-, he will look down two 
streets at once. They are Canal and Common, which 
gently diverge from their starting-point at his feet and 
narrow away before his eye as they run down toward the 
low, unsettled lots and commons behind the city. 

Canal Street, the centre and pride of Xew Orleans, takes 
its name from the slimy old moat that once festered under 
the palisade wall of the Spanish town, where it ran back 
from river to swamp and turned northward on the line 
now marked by the beautiful tree-planted Ttampart Street. 

Common Street marks the ancient boundary of the es- 
tates wrested from the exiled Jesuit fathers by confisca- 
tion. In the beginning of the present century, the long 
wedge-shaped tract between these two lines was a Govern- 
ment reservation, kept for the better efficiency of the for- 
tifications that overlooked its lower border and for a 



FAUBOURG STE. MAKIE. 211 

public road to No-man's land. It was called the Terre 
Commune. 

That part of the Jesuits' former plantations that lay 
next to the Terre Commune was mainly the property of a 
singular personage named Jean Gravier. Its farther-side 
boundary was on a line now indicated by Delord Street. 
When the fire of 1788 laid nearly the lialf of 'New Orleans 
in ashes, his father, Bertrand, and his mother, Marie, had 
laid off this tract into lots and streets, to the depth of three 
squares backward from the river, and called it Villa Gra- 
vier. On her death, the name was changed in her honor, 
and so became the Faubourg Ste. Marie. 

Capitalists had smiled upon the adventure. Julian Poy- 
dras, Claude Girod, Julia a free woman of color, and 
others had given names to its cross-streets by buying cor- 
ner-lots on its river-front. Along this front, under the 
breezy levee, ran the sunny and dusty Tchoupitoulas road, 
entei'ing the town's southern river- side gate, where a 
sentry-box and Spanish corporal's guard drowsed in the 
scant shadow of Fort St. Louis. Outside the levee the 
deep Mississippi glided, turbid, silent, often overbrimming, 
with many a swirl and upward heave of its boiling depths, 
and turning, sent a long smooth eddy back along this 
" making bank," while its main current hurried onward, 
townward, noHhward^ as if it would double on invisible 
piu'suers before it swept to the east and southeast from 
the Place d'Armes and disappeared behind the low groves 
of Slaughterhouse Point. 



212 THE CREOLKS OF LOFISTAXA. 

In the opening years of the eentury only an occasional 
villa and an isolated roadside shop or two had arisen along 
the front of Fanbourg Ste, Marie and in the lirst street 
behind. Calle del Almazen, the Spanish notary wrote 
this street's name, for its lower (northern) end looked 
across the Teri-e Commune upon the large Ahnazen or 
store-house of Kentucky tobacco which Don Estevan Miro 
thought it wise to keep filled with purchases from the per- 
fidious Wilkinson. Rue du Magasin, Storehouse Street, 
the Creoles translated it, and the Americans made it Mag- 
azine Street ; but it was still only a straight road. Truck- 
gardens covered the fertile arpents between and beyond. 
Here and there was a grove of wide-spreading live-oaks, 
here and there a clump of persimmon trees, here and there 
an orchard of figs, here and there an avenue of bitter 
oranges or of towering pecans. The present site of the 
" St. Charles " was a cabbage-garden. Midway between 
Poydras and Girod Streets, behind Magazine, lay a camjyo 
de negroSy a slave camp, probably of cargoes of Guinea or 
Congo slaves. The street that cut through it became Calle 
del Campo — Camp Street. 

Far back in the rear of these lands, on the old Poydras 
draining canal, long since filled up and built upon — in a 
lonely, dreary waste of weeds and bushes dotted thick 
witli cypress stumps and dwarf palmetto, full of rankling 
ponds choked with bulrushes, flags, and pickerel-weed, 
fringed by willows and reeds, and haunted by frogs, 
snakes, crawfish, rats, and mosquitoes, on the edge of the 



FAUBOURG STE. MAEIE. 213 

tangled swamp forest — stood the dilapidated home of 
" Doctor " Gravier, It stood on high pillars. Its win- 
dows and doors were lofty and wide, its verandas were 
broad, its roof was steep, its chimneys were tall, and its 
occupant was a childless, wifeless, companionless old man, 
whose kindness and medical attention to negroes had won 
him his professional title. He claims mention as a type 
of that strange group of men which at this early period 
figured here as the shrewd acquirers of wide suburban 
tracts, leaders of lonely lives, and leavers of great fortunes. 

John McDonough, who at this time Avas a young man, 
a thrifty trader in Guinea negroes, and a suitor for the 
hand of Don Andreas Almonaster's fair daughter, the late 
Baroness Pontalba, became in after days a like solitary 
type of the same class. Jean Gravier's house long sur- 
vived him, a rendezvous for desperate characters, and, if 
rumor is correct, the scene of many a terrible murder. 

In the favoring eddy under the river-bank in front of 
Faubourg Ste. Marie landed the flat-boat fleets from the 
Ohio, the Tennessee, and the Cumberland. Buyers 
crowded here for cheap and fresh provisions. The huge, 
huddled arks became a floating market-place, with tlie 
kersey- and woolsey- and jeans-clad bargemen there, and 
the Creole and his sometimes brightly clad and sometimes 
picturesquely ragged slave here, and the produce of the 
"West changing hands between. But there was more than 
this. Warehouses began to appear on the edge of Tchou- 
pitoulas road, and barrels of pork and flour and meal to 



214 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

mil bickering down into their open doors from the levee's 
top. Any eve eonkl see that, only let war cease, there 
would be a wonderful change in the half-drained, sun- 
baked marshes and kitchen-gardens of Faubourg Ste. 
Marie. 

Presently the change came. It outran the official news 
of ])eace. " Our harbor," wrote Claiborne, the Governor, 
in March, 1815, " is again whitening with canvas; the 
levee is crowded with cotton, tobacco, and other articles 
for exportation." 

A full sunrise of prosperity shone npon 'New Orleans. 
The whole great valley above began to fill up with won- 
derful speed and to pour down into her lap the fruits of 
its agriculture. Thirty-three thousand people were astir 
in her homes and streets. They overran the old bounds. 
They pulled np the old palisade. They shovelled the earth- 
works into the moat and pushed their streets out into the 
fields and thickets. In the old narrow ways — and the 
wider new ones alike — halls, churches, schools, stores, 
warehouses, banks, hotels, and theatres sprang up by day 
and night. 

Faubourg Ste. Marie outstripped all other quarters. 
The unconservative American was eveiywhere, but in 
Faubourg Ste. Marie he was supreme. The Western trade 
crowded down like a breaking np of ice. In 1817, 
1,500 flat-boats and 500 barges tied up to the willows of 
the levee before the new faubourg. Inflation set in. Ex- 
ports ran up to thirteen million dollars' worth. 



FAUBOURG STE. MARIE. 215 

In 1819 came the collapse, but development overrode it. 
Large areas of the hatture were reclaimed in front of the 
faubourg, and the Americans covered them with store 
buildings. In 1812, the first steam vessel had come down 
the Mississippi ; in 1816, for the first time, one overcame 
and reascended its current ; in 1821, 441 flat-boats and 1T4 
barges came to port, and there were 287 arrivals of steam- 
boats. 

The kitchen-gardens vanished. Gravier Street, between 
Tchoupitoulas and Magazine, was paved with cobble- 
stones. The Creoles laughed outright. " A stone pave- 
ment in JSTew Orleans soil ? It will sink out of sight ! " 
But it bore not only their ridicule, but an uproar and 
gorge of wagons and drajs. There was an avalanche of 
trade. It crammed the whole harbor-front — old town and 
new — with river and ocean fleets. It choked the streets. 
The cry was for room and facilities. The Creoles heeded 
it. Up came their wooden sidewalks and curbs, brick and 
stone went down in their place, and by 1822 gangs of 
street paviors were seen and heard here, there, and yonder, 
swinging the pick and ramming the roundstone. There 
were then 41,000 people in the town and its suburbs. 

The old population held its breath. It clung bravely to 
the failing trades of the West Indies, France, and Spain. 
Coffee, indigo, sugar, rice, and foreign fruits and wines 
were still handled in the Rues Toulouse, Conti, St. Louis, 
Chartres, St. Peter, and Royale ; but the lion's share — 
the cotton, the tobacco, pork, beef, corn, flour, and north- 



21() TIIK CIIKOLKS OF LOTTISIANA. 

em and British fabrics — poured into and out of Faubourg 
iSte. Marie tlirough the hands of tlic s\varjiiin<; Americans. 
"New Orleans is going to be a niiglity city," said tliey 
in effect, " and we are going to be New Orleans." But 
the (^reole "was still powerful, and jealous of everything 
that hinted of American absorption. We have seen that, 
in ISIO, he elected one of Ins own race. General Yillere, to 
succeed Claiborne in the governor's chair, and to guard the 
rights that headlong Americans might forget. " Indeed," 
this governor wrote in a special message on the " scan- 
dalous practices almost every instant taking place in New 
Orleans and its suburbs " — " Indeed, we should be cautious 
in receiving all foreigners." That caution was of little 
avail. 



XXX. 

A HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE. 

TTTHAT a change ! The same Governor Villere could 
not but say, " The Louisianian who retraces the 
condition of his country under the government of kings 
can never cease to bless the day when the great American 
confederation received him into its bosom." It was easy 
for Louisianians to be Americans ; but to let Americans be 
Louisianians ! — there was the rub. Yet it had to be. In ten 
years, the simple export and import trade of the port had 
increased fourfold ; and in the face of inundations and 
pestilences, discord of sentiment and tongues, and the sad- 
dest of public morals and disorder, the population had 
nearly doubled. 

Nothing could stop the inflow of people and wealth. In 
the next ten years, 1820-30, trade increased to one and 
three-quarters its already astonishing volume. The inhab- 
itants were nearly 50,000, and the strangers from all parts 
of America and the commercial world were a small army. 
Sometimes there would be five or six thousand up-river 
bargemen in town at once, wild, restless, and unemployed. 
On the levee especially this new tremendous life and 



218 THE rr.EOLEs or lot'isiaxa. 

energy heaved and pal})itated, JJetween 1831 and 1835, 
the mere foreign exports and imports ran np from twenty- 
six to nearly fifty-four million dollars. There were no 
wharves built out into the liarbor yet, and all the vast 
mass of produce and goods lay out under the open sky on 
the long, wide, unbroken level of the curving harbor-front, 
where Ohio bargemen, (xermans, Mississippi raftsmen, 
Irishmen, French, English, Creoles, Yankees, and negro 
and nniiatto slaves surged and jostled ami tilled the air 
witli shouts and imprecations. 

Yice put on the same activity that commerce showed. 
The Creole had never been a strong moral force. The 
American came in as to gold diggings or diamond fields, 
to grab and run. The transatlantic immigrant of those 
days was frecpiently the offseouring of Europe. The West 
Indian M'as a leader in licentiousness, gambling and duel- 
ling. The number of billiard-rooins, gaming-houses, and 
lottery-offices was immense. In the old town they seemed 
to be every second house. There was the French Evan- 
gelical Church Lottery, the Baton Rouge Church Lottery, 
the Natchitoches Catholic Church Lottery, and a host of 
others less piously inclined. The cafes of the central town 
were full of filibusters. In 1819, "General" Long sailed 
hence against Galveston. In 1822, a hundred and fifty 
men left New Orleans in the sloop-of-war Eureka^ and 
assisted in the taking of Porto Cabello, Yenezuela. The 
paving movement had been only a flurry or two, and even 
in the heart of the town, where carriages sometimes sank 



A HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE. 219 

to their axles in mud, liigliway robbery and murder lay 
always in wait for the incautious night wayfarer who ven- 
tured out alone. The police was a mounted gendm^merie. 
If the Legislature committed a tenth of the wickedness it 
was charged with, it was sadly corrupt. The worst day 
of all the week was Sunday. The stores and shops were 
open, but toil slackened and license gained headway. 
Gambling-rooms and ball-rooms were full, weapons were 
often out, the quadroon masques of the Salle de Conde 
were thronged with men of high standing, and crowds of 
barge and raftsmen, as well as Creoles and St. Domingans, 
gathered at those open-air African dances, carousals, and 
debaucheries in the rear of the town that have left their 
monument in the name of " Congo " Square. 

Yet still prosperity smiled and commerce roared along 
the streets of the town and her faubourgs — Ste. Marie on 
her right, Marigny on her left — with ever-rising volume 
and value, and in spite of fearful drawbacks. The climate 
was deadly to Americans, and more deadly to the squalid 
immigrant. Social life, unattractive at best, received the 
Creole and shut the door. The main town was without 
beauty, and the landscape almost without a dry foothold. 
Schools were scarce and poor, churches few and ill at- 
tended, and domestic service squalid, inefficient, and cor- 
rupt. Between 1810 and 1837 there were fifteen epidem- 
ics of yellow fever. Small-pox was frequent. In 1832, 
while yellow fever was still epidemic, cholera entered and 
carried off one person in every six ; many of the dead 



220 THE CRKOLES OF LOUISIANA, 

were buried where they died, and many were thrown into 
the river. Moreover, to get to the town or to leave it was 
a jt»urney famed for its dangers. On one steamboat, three 
hiuuh-ed lives were lost ; on another, one hundred and 
thirty ; on another, the same number ; on another, one 
hundred and twenty. The cost of running a steamer was 
six times as great as on the northern lakes. 

Without these drawbacks what would Kew Orleans 
have been ? For, with them all, and with others which we 
pass b}', her population between 1830 and 1840 once more 
doubled its numbers. She M-as the fourth city of the Unit- 
ed States in the number of her people. Cincinnati, which 
in the previous decade had outgrown her, was surpassed 
and distanced. Only New York, Philadelphia, and Balti- 
more were larger. Boston was nearly as large ; but be- 
sides these there was no other city in the Union of half 
her numbers. Faubourg Ste. Marie had swallowed up the 
suburbs above her until it comprised the whole expanse of 
the old Jesuits' plantations to the line of Felicity Road. 
The old Marquis Marigny de Mandeville, whose plantation 
lay on the lower edge of the town just across the Espla- 
nade, had turned it into lots and streets, and the town 
had run over upon it and covered it with small residences, 
and here and there a villa. The city boundaries had been 
extended to take in both these faubourgs ; and the three 
" municipalities," as they were called, together numbei'ed 
one hundred and two thousand inhabitants. 

The ends of the harbor-front were losing sight of eacli 



A IIUNDKED THOUSAND PEOPLE. 221 

other. In the seasons of liigh water the tall, broad, frail- 
looking steamers that crowded in together, " bow on," at 
the busy leveo, hidden to their hurricane roofs in cargoes 




Old Bourse and St. Louis Hotel. (Afterward the State House), 

of cotton bales, looked down upon not merely a quiet little 
Spanish-American town of narrow streets, low, heavy, 
rugged roofs, and Latin richness and variety of color peep- 
ing out of a mass of overshadowing greenery. Fort St. 



222 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

Charles, tlio last fraction of tlio old fortilicatioiis, Avas 
gone, and the lofty chiiiiney of a I'liited States mint 
smoked in its jWace. The new liourse, later known as St. 
Louis Hotel, and yet later as the fame«l State-house of 
Kcconstruction days, just raised its low, black dome into 
view above the iutervcninsx piles of brick. A hufje prison 
lifted its frowning walls aii<l cpiaint Spanish twin belfries 
gloomily over Congo Square. .Vt th6 white-stuccoed ]\Ier- 
cliants' Exchange, just inside the old boundary on the Ca- 
nal Street side, a stream of men poured in and out, for there 
was the Post-office. Down iu the lower arm of the river's 
bend shone the Third Municipality, — which had been Fau- 
bourg Marigny. On its front, behind a net-work of ship- 
ping, stood the Levee Cotton Press ; it had cost half a 
million dollars. Here on the south, sweeping far around 
and beyond the view almost to the " BulFs Head (Coffee- 
house," was the Second Municipality, once Faubourg Ste. 
Marie, with its lines and lines of warehouses, its Orleans 
Press, that must needs cost a quarter million more than 
the other, and many a lesser one. The town was full of 
banks : the Commercial, the Atchafalaya, the Orleans, the 
Canal, the City, etc. Banks's Arcade was there, a glass- 
roofed mercantile court iu the midst of a large hotel in 
Magazine Street, now long known as the St. James. Ho- 
tels were numerous. Li Camp and St. Charles Streets 
stood two theatres, where the world's stars deigned to pre- 
sent themselves, and the practical jokers of the upper gal- 
leries concocted sham fights antl threw straw men over 



A IIUNDKED THOUSAND PEOPLE. 



223 



into the pit below, with cries of murder. Here and there 
a church — the First Presbyterian, the Carondelet Metho- 
dist — raised an admonitory finger. The site of old Jean 
Gravier's house was hidden behind Poydras Market ; the 




uncanny iron frames of the Gas AYorks rose beyond. The 
reservoir of the water-works lay in here to the left near 
the river, whose muddy water it used. Back yonder in 
the street named for Julia, the f. w. c.,* a little bunch of 
schooner masts and pennons showed where the Canal Bank 
had dug a " New Basin " and brought the waters of Lake 
Pontchartrain up into this part of the city also. 

It was the period when the American idea of architect- 



* " Free woman of color " — initials used in the Louisiana courts and 
notarial docvxments. 



224 TIIK CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

lire had passed from its untrained iiiiiueencc to a sopho- 
nioric affectation of Greek forms. Banks, hotels, clnirches, 
theatres, mansions, cottages, all were Ionic or Corinthian, 
and the whole American quarter was a glcanung white. 
But the commercial shadow of this quarter fell darkly upon 
the First Municipality, the old town. A quiet crept into 
the Rue Toulouse. The fashionable shops on the Kue 
Royale slipped away and spread out in Canal Street. The 
vault of the St. Louis dome still echoed the voice of the 
double-tongued, French-English auctioneer of town lots 
and slaves ; but in the cabbage-garden of " old Mr. 
Percy," in the heart of I'aubourg Ste. Marie, a resplen- 
dent rival, the palatial St. Charles, lifted its dazzling 
cupola high above all surroundings and overpeered old 
town and new, river, plain, and receding forest. Its ro- 
tunda was the unofficial guildhall of all the city's most 
active elements. Here met the capitalist, the real estate 
operator, the merchant, the soldier, the tourist, the politi- 
cian, the filibuster, the convivialist, the steamboat captain, 
the horse-fancier ; and ever conspicuous among the throng 
— which had a trick of separating suddenly and dodging 
behind the pillars of the rotunda at the sound of high 
words — was a man, a type, an index of great wealth to 
New Orleans, who in this spot was never a stranger and 
was never quite at home. 



XXXI. 

FLUSH TIMES. 

rpHE brow and clieek of this man were darkened by 
outdoor exposure, but they were not weatlier-beaten. 
His shapely, bi-onzed hand M-as no harder or rougher than 
was due to the use of the bridle-rein and the gunstock. 
His eye was the eye of a steed ; his neck — the same. His 
hair M'as a little luxuriant. His speech was positive, his 
manner was military, his sentiments were antique, his cloth- 
ing was of broadcloth, his boots were neat, and his hat 
was soft, broad, and slouched a little to show its fineness. 
Such in his best aspect was the Mississippi River planter. 
When sugar was his crop and Creole French his native 
tongue, his polish would sometimes be finer still, with a 
finish got in Paris, and his hotel Mould be the St. Louis. 

He was growing to be a great power. The enormous 
agricultural resources of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, 
and Tennessee were his. The money-lender gyrated 
around him with sweet smiles and open purse. He was 
mortgaged to the eyes, and still commanded a credit that 
courted and importuned him. He caused an immense 
increase of trade. His extravaerant wants and the needs 



228 TIIH ("KKOIJ'.S OF LonSIAXA. 

of his armies of slaves kept the city dniiued of its capital 
almost or (piite the -whole year roimtl. Borrower and 
lender vied with each other in recklessness. Much the 
larger portion of all the varied products of the West re- 
ceived in New Orleans was reshipped, not to sea, but to 
tlie plantations of the interii)r, often returning along the 
same route half the distance thoy had originally come. 
]\rillions of capital that Avould have yielded slower but 
immensely better final results in other channels W'eut into 
the planters' paper, based on the yalue of slaves and of 
lands whose value depended on slave labor, — a species of 
wealth unexchangeable in the great Avorld of commerce, 
fictitious as paper money, and even more illusory. But, 
like the paper money that was then inundating the coun- 
try, this system produced an immense volume of business; 
and this, in turn, called into the city, to fill the streets and 
landings and the thousands of humble dwellings that 
sprang up throughout the old Faubourg Marigny and 
spread out on the right flank of Faubourg Ste. Marie, the 
Irish and German emigrant, by tens of thousands. 

It w^as in the midst of these conditions that mad specu- 
lations in Western lands and the downfall of the United 
States Bank rolled the great financial crisis of 1837 across 
the continent. Where large residts had intoxicated enter- 
prise, banks without number, and often without founda- 
tion, strewed their notes among the infatuated people. 
But in New Orleans enterprise had forgotten everything 
but the factorage of the staple crops. The banks were 



FLUSH TIMES. 231 

not so many, but they followed the fashion in having 
make-believe capital and in crumbling to ashes at a 
touch. Sixty millions of capital, four of deposits, twelve 
hundred thousand specie, eighteen hundred thousand real 
estate, and seventy-two millions receivables, mostly pro- 
tested, — such was their record when they suspended. 

" x\. whirlwind of ruin," said one of the newspapers, 
" prostrated the greater portion of the city." Everybody's 
hands were full of " shin-plasters." There was no other 
currency. Banks and banking were execrated, and their 
true office so ill understood that a law was passed prevent- 
ing the establishment of any such institution in the State. 
A few old banks that weathered the long financial stress 
accepted, with silent modesty, the monopoly thus thrown 
into their hands, and in 1843, having abandoned the 
weaker concerns to shipwreck, resumed specie payment. 
The city's foreign commerce had dropped to thirty-four 
and three-quarters million dollars, a loss of nineteen mil- 
lions ; but, for the first time in her history, she sent to sea 
a million bales of cotton. 

The crisis had set only a momentary check upon agri- 
culture. The financiers of Kew Orleans came out of it 
more than ever infatuated with the plantation idea. It 
had become the ruling principle in the social organism of 
the South, the one tremendous drawback to the best de- 
velopment of country and city ; and now the whole lower 
Mississippi Yalley threw all its energies and all its fortune 
into this seductive mistake. 



282 TIIK niKOLKS OF LOI'ISIANA. 

And still the city grew ; grew as tlie Delta sands on 
M'liich it stands had grown, by the compulsory tribute of 
the Mississippi. The great staples of the Valley poured 
down ever more and more. In 1842, the value of these re- 
ceipts was §45,700,000 ; in 1844, it was 800,000,000 ; in 
184G, it was over $77,000,000 ; in 1847, it was ,$90,000,000 ; 
in 1850, it was close to $97,000,000. The city lengthened ; 
it broadened ; it lifted its head higher. The trowel rang 
everywhere on home-made brick and imported granite, and 
houses rose by hundreds. The Irish and Germans 
thronged down from the decks of emigrant ships at the 
rate of thirty thousand a year. They even partly crowded 
out slave service. In 1850, there were 5,330 slaves less 
in the city than in 1840. The free mulatto also gave way. 
Unenterprising, despised, persecuted, this caste, once so 
scant in numbers, had grown, in 1840, to be nearly as nu- 
merous as the whites. The " abolition " question brought 
them double hatred and suspicion ; and restrictive, unjust, 
and intolerant State legislation reduced their numbers — 
it must have been by exodus — from 19,000 to less than 
10,000 souls. Allowing for natural increase, eleven or 
twelve thousand must have left the city. The proportion 
of whites rose from fifty-eight to seventy-eight per cent., 
and the whole pojnilation of Xew Orleans and its environs 
was 133,650. 

Another city had sprung up on the city's upper boun- 
dary. In 1833, three suburbs, Lafayette, Livaudais, and 
Keligeuses, the last occupying an old plantation of the 



FLUSH TIMES. 



233 



UrsuHne nuns, combined into a town, Abont 1840, the 
wealthy Americans began to move np liere into " large, 




Entrance to a Cotton Yard. 



commodious, one-story houses, full of windows on all 
sides, and surrounded by broad and shady gardens." 



i?;34 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

Hero, but noaicr flic river, ( Jcrnians and Irish — especially 
tlio former — liled in e(jiitiiuially, and by 1850 the town of 
Lafayette contained o\er fourteen thousand residents, 
nearly all white. 

It M-as a red-letter year. The first street pavement of 
large, square granite blocks was laid. "Wharf building set 
in strongly. The wii-es of the electro-magnetic telegraph 
drew the city into closer connection with civilization. 
The mind of the financier Avas aroused, and lie turned his 
eye toward railroads. The '' Tehuantepec route "" received 
its first decided impulse. Mexican grants were bought ; 
surveys were procured ; much effort was made— and lost. 
The Mexican Government was too unstable and too fickle 
to be bargained Avith. Ihit in 1851, meantime, two great 
improvements were actually set on foot ; to M'it, the two 
railways that eventually united the city with the great 
central system of the Union in the Mississippi-Ohio Yalley, 
and with the vast Southwest, Mexico, and California. 
These two works moved slowly, but by 1855 and 1857 the 
railway trains M-ere skimming out across the fiowery j'>?m- 
ries tremhlantes eighty miles westward toward Texas, and 
the same distance northward toward the centre of the 
continent. In 1852, Lafayette and the nnmicipalities were 
consolidated into one city govei-nment. Sixteen years of 
subdivision under separate municipal councils, and similar 
expensive and obstructive nonsense, had taught Creole, 
American, and immigrant the value of unity and of the 
American principles of growth better than unity could 



FLUSH TIMES. 235 

have done it. Algiers, a suburb of machine shops and 
nautical repair yards, began to grow conspicuous on the 
farther side of the river. 

The consolidation was a great step. The American 
quarter became the centre and core of the whole city. Its 
new and excessively classic marble municipality hall be- 
came the city hall. Its public grounds became the chosen 
rendezvous of all popular assemblies. All the great trades 
sought domicile in its streets ; and the St. Charles, at 
whose memorable burning, in 1850, the people wept, being 
restored in 1852-53, made final eclipse of the old St. 
Louis. 

A small steel-engraved picture of !New Orleans, made 
just before this period, is obviously the inspiration of the 
commercial and self-important American. The ancient 
plaza, the cathedral, the old hall of the cabildo, the cala- 
boza, the old Spanish barracks, the emptied convent of 
the Ursulines, the antiquated and decayed Rue Toulouse, 
the still quietly busy Chart res and Old Levee Streets — all 
that was time-honored and venerable, are pushed out of 
view, and the latel}' humble Faubourg Ste. Marie fills the 
picture almost from side to side. Long ranks of huge, 
lofty-chimneyed Mississippi steamers smoke at the levee ; 
and high above the deep and solid phalanxes of brick and 
stone rise the majestic dome of the first St. Charles 
and the stately tower of St. Patrick's Church, queen and 
bishop of the board. 

But the ancient landmarks trembled to a worse fate than 



i2M6 TlIK CUKOI.KS OF LonsiANA. 

being left out oi" ;i jiictiirc. Uenoviition came in. In 
1850, the catliedral Avas toiii dnwu to its foundations, and 
began to rise again with all of its Spanish picturesqueness 
lost and little or nothing gained in beauty. On its right 
and left absurd French roofs M-ere clapped upon the ca- 
bildo and the court-house. Old Don Andreas's dauichter, 
the Baroness Pontalba, replaced the (piaint tile-roofed 
store buildings that her father had Imilt on cither side of 
the square with large, new lows of red brick. Tlie city 
laid out the Place d'Arnies, once her grassy play-ground, 
in blinding white-shell walks, trinnned shrubbery, and 
dusty flower-beds, and later, in 1855, placed in its centre 
the bronze equestriaii ligui-e of the deliverer of Kew 
Orleans, and called the classic spot Jackson Square. Yet, 
even so, it remains to the present the last lurldng-place of 
the romance of primitive Kew Orleans. 

It was not a time to look for very good taste. All 
thoughts were led away b}^ the golden charms of com- 
merce. In 1851, the value of receipts from tlie interior 
was nearly $107,000,000. The mint coined $10,000,000, 
mostly the product of C^ilifoi-nia's new-found treasure- 
fields. The year 1853 brought still greater increase. Of 
cotton alone, there came sixty-eight and a quarter million 
dollars' worth. The sugar crop was tens of thousands of 
hogsheads larger than ever before. Over a tenth of all 
the arrivals from sea were of steamships. There was 
another inflation. Leaving out the immense unascertained 
amounts of shipments into the interior, the city's l)usiness, 




Thii Old Bank in Toulouse Street, 



FLUSH TIMES. 239 

in 1856, rose to t\vo hundred and seventy-one and a quar- 
ter millions. In 1857 it was three hundred and two mil- 
lions. In this year came a crash, which the whole country 
felt. New Orleans felt it rather less than other cities, and 
quickly recovered. 

We pause at 1860. In that year Xew Orleans rose to 
a prouder commercial exaltation than she had ever before 
enjoyed, and at its close began that sudden and swift de- 
scent which is not the least pathetic episode of our unfor- 
tunate civil war. In that year, the city that a hundred 
and forty years before had consisted of a hundred bark 
and palmetto-thatched huts in a noisome swamp counted, 
as the fraction of its commerce comprised in its exports, 
imports, and domestic receipts, the value of three hundred 
and twenty-four million dollars. 



XXXTT. 

WHY NOT BIGGER THAN LONDON. 

rrillE great Creole city's geograpliieal position lias al- 
ways dazzled every eye except the cold, coy scrutiny 
of capital. " The position of Xew Orleans," said Presi- 
dent Jefferson in 1S04, "certainly destines it to l)e the 
greatest city the world has ever seen." He excepted 
neither Home nor Babylon. But man's most positive pre- 
dictions are based upon contingencies ; one unforeseen 
victory over nature bowls them down ; the seeming cer- 
tainties of to-morrow are changed to the opposite certain- 
ties of to-day ; desei-ts become gardens, gardens cities, and 
older cities the haunts of bats and foxes. 

When the early Kentuckian and Ohioan accepted na- 
ture's highway to market, and proposed the conquest of 
Xew Orleans in order to lay that highway open, they hon- 
estly believed there was no other possible outlet to the 
commercial world. When steam navigation came, they 
hailed it with joy and without question. To them it 
seemed an ultimate result. To the real-estate hoarding 
Creole, to the American merchant who was crowding and 
chafing him, to every superficial eye at least, it seemed a 



WHY NOT BIGGER THAN LONDON. 241 

pledge of unlimited commercial empire bestowed by the 
laws of gravitation. Few saw in it the stepping-stone 
from the old system of commerce by natural highways to 
a new system by direct and artificial lines. 

It is hard to understand, looking back from the present, 
how so extravagant a mistake could have been made by 
wise minds. From the first — or perhaps, we should say, 
from the peace of 1815 — the development of the West 
declined to wait on !N^ew Orleans, or even on steam. In 
1825, the new principle of commercial transportation — 
that despises alike the aid and the interference of nature 
— opened, at Buffalo, the western end of the Erie Canal, 
the gate-way of a new freight route to northern Atlan- 
tic tide-waters, many hundreds of leagues more direct 
than the long journey down the Mississippi to New Or- 
leans and around the dangerous capes of Florida. In the 
same year another canal was begun, and in 1832 it con- 
nected the Ohio with Lake Erie; so that, in 1835, the 
State of Ohio alone sent through Buffalo to Atlantic 
ports 86,000 barrels of lloui*, 98,000 bushels of wheat, and 
2,500,000 staves. 

Another outlet was found, better than all transits — 

manufactures. Steam, driving all manner of machinery, 

built towns and cities. Cincinnati had, in 1820, 32,000 

inhabitants ; in 1830, 52,000. Pittsburg became, " in the 

extent of its manufactures, the only rival of Cincinnati in 

the "West." St. Louis, still in embryo, rose from 10,000 to 

14,000. Buffalo, a town of 2,100, quadrupled its numbers. 
16 



242 THE CREOLES OF LOFISIAXA. 

Meanwhile, far down in Xew Orleans the Creole, i:;rini]y, 
and the American, more boastfully, rejoiced in a hla/.c of 
prosperity that blinded both. How should they, in a rain 
of wealth, take note that, to keep pace with the wonder- 
ful development in the great valley above, their increase 
should have been three times as great as it was, and that 
the sun of illimituble empire, Mhit-h had promised to 
shine brightest upon them, Avas shedding brighter prom- 
ises and kinder rays eastward, and even northward, across 
nature's highways and barriers. Even steam navigation 
began, on the great lakes, to demonstrate that the golden 
tolls of the Mississippi were not all to be collected at one 
or even two gates. 

How might this have been stopped ? By no means. 
The moment East and West saw that straighter courses 
toward connnercial Europe could be taken than wild 
nature offered, the direct became the natural route, and 
the circuitous the unnatural. East-and-west trade lines, 
meant, sooner or later, the commercial subordination of 
New Orleans, until such time as the growth of countries 
behind her in the Southwest should bring her also upon 
an east-and-west line. Meantime the new system could 
be delayed by improving the old, many of whose draw- 
backs were removable. That which could not be stopped 
could yet be postponed. 

But there was one drawback that riveted all the rest. 
Through slave-holding, and the easy fortune-getting it 
afforded, an intellectual indolence spread evervwhere, and 



AVIIY NOT BIGGER THAN LONDON. 245 

the merchant of Faubourg Ste. Marie, American — often 
New Englander — as he was, sank under the seductions 
of a livelihood so simple, so purely executive, and so rich 
in perquisites, as the marketing of raw crops. From this 
mental inertia sprang an invincible provincialism ; the 
Creole, whose society he was always courting, intensified 
it. Better civilizations were too far away to disturb it. 
A "peculiar institution" doubled that remoteness, and an 
enervating, luxurious climate folded it again upon itself. 
It colored his financial convictions and all his conduct of 
public affairs. He confronted obstacles with serene apa- 
thy ; boasted of his city's natural advantages, forgetting 
that it was man, not nature, that he had to contend with ; 
surrendered ground which he might have held for gene- 
rations ; and smilingly ignored the fact that, with all her 
increase of wealth and population, his town was slipping 
back along the comparative scale of American cities. 
" Was she not the greatest in exports after New York ? " 
The same influence that made the Creole always 
and only a sugar, tobacco, or cotton factor, Avaived away 
the classes which might have brought in manufactures 
with them. Its shadow fell as a blight upon intelligent, 
trained labor. Immigrants from the British Isles and from 
Europe poured in ; but those adepts in the mechanical and 
productive arts that so rapidly augment the fortunes of a 
commonwealth staid away ; there was nothing in surround- 
ing nature or society to evolve the operative from the hod- 
carrier and drayman, and the prospecting manufacturer and 



240 TIIK CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

liis capital turned aside to newer towns where labor was 
uncontenined, and skill and technical knowledge sprang 
forward at the call of enlightened enterprise. 

Men never guessed the whole money value of time until 
the great inventions for the facilitation of commerce began 
to ajipeai'. " Adopt us,"' these seemed to say as they came 
forward in procession, " or you cannot become or even re- 
main great." But, even so, only those cities lying some- 
where on right lines between the great centres of supply 
and demand could seize and hold them. It was the fate, 
not the fault, of Xew Orleans not to be one such. St. 
Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Pittsburg, Boston, New 
York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, were more fortunate ; 
while Cleveland, Buffalo, Chicago, Avere born of these new 
conditions. The locomotive engine smote the commercial 
domain of New Orleans in half, and divided the best part 
of her trade beyond the mouth of the Ohio among her 
rivals. In that decade of development — 1830-40 — when 
the plantation idea was enriching her with one hand and 
rol)bing her of doul)le with the other, the West was filling 
with town life, and railroads and canals were starting 
eagerly eastward and westward, bearing immense burdens 
of freight and travel, and changing the scale of miles to 
that of minutes. Boston and New York had pre-empted 
the future with their daring outlays, and clasped hands 
tighter with the States along the Ohio by lines of direct 
transit, Pennsylvania joined Philadelphia with the same 
river, and spent more money in raih'oads and canals than 




r . . >_ 'a Bourse.) Looking toward the American Q jarter 



WHY NOT BIGGER THAN LONDON. 249 

any other State in the Union. Baltimore reached ont her 
Chesapeake & Ohio canal and railway. Ohio and Indi- 
ana spent millions. But the census of 1840 proclaimed 
]yew Orleans the fourth city of the Union, and her mer- 
chants openly professed the belief that they were to be- 
come the metropolis of America without exertion. 

Rapid transit only amused them, ^vllile raw crops and 
milled breadstuffs still sought the cheapest rates of freight. 
They looked at the tabulated figures ; they were still ship- 
ping their share of the Valley's vastly increased field pro- 
ducts. It was not true, they said, with sudden resentment, 
that they " sold the skin for a groat and bought the tail 
for a shilling." But they did not look far enough. Im- 
proved transj^ortation, denser settlement, labor-saving ma- 
chinery, had immensely increased the West's producing 
power. New Orleans should have received and exported 
an even greater proportion — not merely quantity — of those 
products of the field. Partly not heeding, and partly un- 
able to help it, she abandoned this magnificent surplus to 
the growing cities of the "West and East. Still more did 
she fail to notice that the manufactures of the Mississippi 
and Ohio States had risen from fifty to one hundred and 
sixty-four millions. She began to observe these facts only 
as another decade was closing with 1850, when her small 
import trade had shrunken to less than a third that of 
Boston and a tenth that of 'New York. 

Her people then began to call out in alarm. Now ad- 
mitting, now denying, they marked, with a loser's impa- 



250 



THE CIIKOLES OF LOIISIAXA. 



tience, the progress of otlicr cities at what seemed to be 
their expense. Boston had surpassed them in numbers ; 
Brooklyn was four-lifths their size; St. Louis, seveu- 




Old Passage de la Bourse. Looking toward the French Quarter. 



eightlis ; Cincinnati was but a twenty -fifth behind ; Louis- 
ville, Chicago, Buffalo, Pittsburg, were coming on with 
populations of from forty to fifty thousand. Where were 



WHY NOT BIGGER TIIAX LONDON. 251 

the days when Xew Orleans was the commercial empress 
of her great valley and heir-apparent to the sovereignty 
of the world's trade ? New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, 
Liverpool — could they ever be overtaken ? American 
merchant and Creole property-holder cried to each other 
to throw off their lethargy and place "New Orleans where 
JSTature had destined her to sit. 

The air was full of diagnoses : There had been too ex- 
clusive an attention to the moving of crops ; there had 
been too much false pride against mercantile pursuits ; 
sanitation had been neglected ; there had not been even 
the pretense of a quarantine since 1825 ; public improve- 
ments had been few and trivial ; a social exclusiveness 
made the town unhomelike and repellant to the higher 
order of immigrant ; the port charges were suicidal. One 
pen even brought out the underlying fact of slave labor, 
and contrasted its voiceless acceptation of antiquated 
methods of work with the reflecting, outspeaking, acting 
liberty of the Northern workman which filled the North- 
ern communities with practical thinkers. The absurd 
municipality system of city government, M'liich split the 
city into four towns, was rightly blamed for much non- 
progression. 

Much, too, was the more unjust blame laid at the door 
of financiers and capitalists. Kailways ? But who could 
swing a railway from New Orleans, in any direction, that it 
would not be better to stretch from some point near the cen- 
tre of Western supply to some other centre in the manu- 



2.»1^ I 111; CKKOLKS OF LoriSIA.NA. 

facturiiiij: aiul c'onsuiiiin<:; East i Slave labor liad liandctl 
over the rich pi-ize of European and New England innni- 
gration to the nnnKHiopolizcd "West, and the purely foi-- 
tune-hunting canal-boat and locomotive pushed aside the 
slave and his owner and followed the free immigrant. 
And, in truth, it was years later, when the outstretched 
ii-on arms of Xorthern enterprise began to grasp the pro- 
ducts of the Southwest itself, that New Orleans capitalists, 
with more misgiving than enthusiasm, thrust out their first 
railway Avorthy of the name through the great plantation 
State of Mississippi. 

Some lamented a lack of banking capital. But bankers 
knew that Xew York's was comparatively smaller. Some 
cried against summer absenteeism ; but absenteeism Avas 
equally bad in the cities that had thriven most. Some 
pointed to the large proportion of foreigners ; but the first 
census that gave this proportion showied it but forty-four 
and a half per cent, of the M-hites in l!s^ew Orleans, against 
forty-two in Cincinnati, fortj'-eight in Kew York, and 
fifty-two in St. Louis. The truth lay deeper hid. In 
those cities American thought prevailed, and the incoming 
foreigner accepted it. In Kew Orleans American thought 
was foreign, unwelcome, disparaged by the unaspiring, 
satirical Creole, and often apologized for by the American, 
who found himself a minority in a combination of social 
forces of tener in sympathy with European ideas than with 
the moral energies and the enthusiastic and venturesome 
enterprise of the !New World. Moreover, twenty-eight 



WHY NOT BIGGER THAN LOXDOX. 



253 



thousand slaves and free blacks hampered the spirit of 
progress b}' sheer dead weight. 

AV^as it true that the import trade needed only to be cul- 







^, 



Behind the Old French IWarket^ 



tivated ? Who should support it beside the planter ? And 
tlie planter, all powerful as he was, Avas numerically a 
small minority, and his favorite investments were land and 
negroes. The M'ants of his slaves were onlv the most 



254 TJIE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

l)riiiiitivc, and their stupid and slovenly eyc-servicc made 
the introduction of labor-saving niachinery a farce. Who 
or what should make an import traded IS'ot the Southern 
valley. ]S\»t the West, either ; fur her imports, she must 
have straight lines and prompt deliveries. 

Could manufactures be developed ? Not easily, at least. 
The same fatal shadow fell upon them. The unintelligent, 
uneconomical black slave was unavailable for its service ; 
and to graft ujwn the slave-burdened South the high- 
spirited operatives of other countries was impossible. 

What did all this sum up ? Stripped of disguises, it 
stood a triuiii])h of maehineiy over slaver^' that could not 
be retrieved, save possibly through a social revolution so 
great and apparently so ruinous that the mention of it 
kindled a M'hite heat of public exasperation. 

All this was emphasized by the Creole, lie retained 
much power still, as well by his natural force as by his 
ownership of real estate and his easy coalition with for- 
eigners of like ideas, lie cared little to understand. It 
was his pride not to be understood. lie divided and para- 
lyzed public sentiment when he could no longer rule it, 
and often met the most imperative calls for innovation 
with the most unbending conservatism. For every move- 
ment was change, and every change carried him nearer 
and nearer toward the current of American ideas and to 
absorption into their flood, which bore too much the sem- 
blance of annihilation. Hold back as he might, the trans- 
formation was appallingly swift. And now a new influ- 



WHY NOT BIGGER THAN LONDON. 255 

ence had set in, which above all others was destined to 
promote, ever more and more, the unity of all the diverse 
elements of New Orleans society, and their equipment for 
the task of placing their town in a leading rank among the 
greatest cities of the world. 



XXXIII. 

THE SCHOOL-MASTER. 

^MlIE year 1841 dates the rise in Xew Orleans of tlie 
modern system of free public schools. It really be- 
gan in the German-American suburb, Lafayette ; but the 
next year a single school was opened in the Second Mu- 
nicipality " with some dozen scholars of both sexes." 

All the way back to the Cession, efforts, more or less 
feeble, had been made for public education ; but all of 
them lacked that idea of popular and universal benefit 
which has made the American public school a welcome 
boon throughout America, not excepting Louisiana. In 
1804, an act had passed " to establish a university in the 
territory of Orleans." The university was to comprise the 
" college of Xew Orleans." But seven years later nothing 
hud been done. In 1812, however, there rose on the old 
Bayou road, a hundred yards or so beyond the former line 
of the town's rear ramparts, at the corner of St. Claude 
Street, such a modest Orleans college as §15,000 would 
build and equip. But it was not free, except to fifty 
charity scholars. The idea was still that of condescending 
benevolence, not of a paying investment by society for its 



THE SCHOOL-MASTER. 257 

own protection and elevation. Ten years later tliis was 
the only school in the city of a public character. In 1826, 
there were three small schools where " all the branches of 
a polite education " were taught. Two of these were in 
the old Ursuline convent. A fourth finds mention in 1838, 
but the college seems to have disappeared. 

Still the mass of educable youth, — the children who 
played " oats, peas, beans," with French and German and 
Irish accents, about the countless sidewalk doorsteps of a 
city of one and two-story cottages (it was almost such) ; 
the girls who carried their little brothers and sisters on 
one elbow and hip and stared in at weddings and funerals; 
the boys whose kite-flying and games were full of terms 
and outcries in mongrel French, and who abandoned every- 
thing at the wild clangor of bells and ran to fires where 
the volunteer firemen dropped the hose and wounded and 
killed each other in pitched battles ; the ill-kept lads who 
risked their lives daily five months of the year swimming 
in the yellow whirlpools of the Mississippi among the 
wharves and flat-boats, who, naked and dripping, dodged 
the dignified police that stalked them among the cotton 
bales, who robbed mocking-birds' nests and orange and fig- 
trees, and trapped nonpareils and cardinals, orchard-orioles 
and indigo-birds in the gardens of Lafayette and the sub- 
urban fields, — these had not been reached, had not been 
sought by the educator. The public recognition of a 
common vital interest in a connnon elevation was totally 

lacking. 

17 



258 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

At length this feeling was aroused. Men of public 
spirit spoke and acted ; and such pioneers as Peters, Burke, 
Touro, Martin, De Bow, and tiie Creoles Dimitry, Forstall, 
Gayarre, and others are gratefully remembered by a later 
generation for their labors in the cause of education. In 
the beginning of 1842 there were in the American quarter 
300 children in private schools and 2,000 in none. At its 
close, the public schools of this quarter and Lafayette had 
over 1,000 pupils. In the next year, there were over 
1,300 ; in 1S44, there were 1,800. In 1845, the University 
of Louisiana was really established. The medical depart- 
ment had already an existence ; this branch and that of 
law were in full operation in 1847, and Creole and Ameri- 
can sat side by side before their lecturers. 

Meanwhile the impulse for popular enlightenment took 
another good direction. In 1842, Mr. B. F. French threw 
open a library to the public, Mhich in four years numbered 
7,500 volumes. The State Library was formed, with 3,000 
volumes, for the use, mainly, of the Legislature. The City 
Library, also 3,000 volumes, was formed. In 1848 it num- 
bered 7,500 volumes ; but it was intended principally for 
the schools, and was not entirely free. An association 
threw open a collection of 2,000 volumes. An historical 
society was revived. In 1846 and 1847 public lectures 
were given and heartily supported ; but, in 1848, a third 
series was cut short by a terrible epidemic of cholera. 
About the same time, the " Fisk " Library of 6,000 vol- 
nmes, with " a building for their reception," was offered 



THE SCHOOL-MASTEE. 259 

to the city. But enthusiasm had declined. The gift was 
neglected, and as late as 1854, the city was still without a 
single entirely free library. 

In 1850 there was but one school, Sunday-school, or 
public library in Louisiana to each 73,966 persons, or 100 
volumes to each 2,310 persons. In Ehode Island, there 
were eleven and a half times as many books to each per- 
son. In Massachusetts, there were 100 volumes to every 
188 persons. In the pioneer State of Michigan, without 
any large city, there was a volume to every fourth person. 
True, in Louisiana there were 100 volumes to every 1,218 
free persons, but this only throws us back upon the fact 
that 245,000 persons w^ere totally without books and were 
forbidden by law to read. 

It is pleasanter to know that the city's public schools 
grew rapidly in numbers and efficiency, and that, even 
when her library facilities were so meagre, the proportion 
of youth in these schools was larger than in Baltimore or 
Cincinnati, only slightly inferior to St. Louis and ]^ew York, 
and decidedly surpassed only in Philadelphia and Boston. 
In the old French quarter, the approach of school-hour saw 
thousands of Creole children, satchel in hand, on their 
way to some old live-oak-shaded colonial villa, or to some 
old theatre once the scene of nightly gambling and sword- 
cane fights, or to some ancient ball-room where the now 
faded quadroons had once shone in splendor and waltzed 
with the mercantile and official dignitaries of city and 
State, or to some bright, new school building, all windows 



260 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

and verandas. Thither they went for an English educa- 
tion. It was not first choice, but it was free, and — tlie 
father and mother admitted, with an amiable shrug — it 
was also best. 

The old, fierce enmity against the English tongue and 
American manners began to lose its practical weight and 
to be largely a matter of fireside sentiment. The rich 
Creole, both of plantation and town, still drew his inspira- 
tions from French tradition, — not from books, — and sought 
both culture and pastime in Paris. His polish heightened ; 
his language improved ; he dropped the West Indian soft- 
ness that had crept into his pronunciation, and the African- 
isms of his black nurse. His children still babbled them, 
but they were expected to cast them off about the time of 
their first communion. However, the suburban lands were 
sold, old town and down-town property W'as sinking in 
value, the trade with Latin countries languished, and the 
rich Creole was only one here and there among throngs of 
humbler brethren Avho were learning the hard lessons of 
pinched living. To these an English -American training 
was too valuable to be refused. They took kindly to the 
American's counting-room desk. They even began to 
emigrate aci'oss Canal Street. 



XXXIV. 

LATER DAYS. 

"VTOT schools on] J, but churclies, multiplied rapidly. 
-^^ There was a great improvement in public order. 
Affrays were still common ; the Know-Xothing movement 
came on, and a few " thugs " terrorized the city with cam- 
paign broils, beating, stabbing, and shooting. Base politi- 
cal leaders and spoilsmen utilized these disorders, and they 
reached an unexpected climax and end one morning con- 
fronted by a vigilance committee, which had, under cover 
of night, seized the town arsenal behind the old Cabildo^ 
and barricaded the approaches to the Place d'Armes with 
uptorn paving-stones. But riots were no longer a feature 
of the city. It was no longer required that all the night- 
watch within a mile's circuit should rally at the sound of 
a rattle. Fire-engines were no longer needed to wet down 
huge mobs that threatened to demolish the Carondelet 
Street brokers' shops or the Cuban cigar stores. Drunken 
bargemen had ceased to swarm by many hundreds against 
the peace and dignity of the State, and the publicity and 
respectability of many other vicious practices disappeared. 
Communication with the outside world was made much 



262 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIAIS'A. 

easier, prompter, and more frequent by the growth of 
raih'oads. Both the average Creole and the average 
American became more refined. The two types lost 
some of their points of difference. The American ceased 
to crave entrance into Creole society, having now separate 
circles of his own ; and when they mingled it was on more 
equal terms, and the Creole was sometimes the proselyte. 
They were one on the great question that had made the 
American southerner the exasperated champion of ideas 
contrary to the ground principles of American social order. 
The New Orleans American was apt, moreover, by this time 
to be New-Orleans born. He had learned some of the 
Creole's lethargy, much of his love of pleasure and his child- 
ish delight in pageantry. St. Charles Street — the centre 
of the American quarter, the focus of American theatres 
and American indulgences in decanter and dice — seemed 
strangely un-American when Mardigras filled it with dense 
crowds, tinsel, rouge, grotesque rags, Circean masks, fool's- 
caps and harlequin colors, lewdness, mock music, and tipsy 
buffoonery. " We want," said one American of strange 
ambition, " to make our city the Naples of America." 

By and by a cloud darkened the sky. Civil war came 
on. The Creole, in that struggle, was little different from 
the Southerner at large. A little more impetuous, it may 
be, a little more gayly reckless, a little more prone to rea- 
son from desire ; gallant, brave, enduring, faithful ; son, 
grandson, great-grandson, of good soldiers, and a better 
soldier every way and truer to himself than his courageous 



LATER DAYS. 263 

forefathers. He was early at Pensacola. He was at 
Charleston when the first gun was fired. The first hero 
that came back from the Virginia Peninsula on his shield 
was a Ci'eole. It was often he who broke the quiet 
along the Potomac, now with song and now with rifle-shot. 
He was at Bull-Run, at Shiloh, on all those blood-steeped 
fields around Richmond. He marched and fought with 
Stonewall Jackson. At Mobile, at the end, he was there. 
No others were quite so good for siege guns and water- 
batteries. AVhat fields are not on his folded banners ? 
He went through it all. But we will not follow him. 
Neither will we write the history of his town in those 
dread days. Arming, marching, blockade, siege, surrender, 
military occupation, grass-grown streets, hungry women, 
darkened homes, broken hearts, — let ns not write the 
chapter ; at least, not yet. 

The war passed. The bitter days of Reconstruction fol- 
lowed. They, too, must rest unreconnted. The sky is 
brightening again. The love of the American Union has 
come back to the Creole and the American of New Orleans 
stronger, for its absence, than it ever was before ; stronger, 
founded in a triple sense of right, necessity, and choice. 

The great south gate of the Mississippi stood, in ISSO, 
a city of two hundred and sixteen thousand people, and 
has been growing; ever since. Onlv here and there a broad 
avenue, with double roadway and slender grassy groves of 
forest trees between, marks the old dividing lines of the 
faubourgs that have from time to time been gathered 



264 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

within her boundaries. Her streets measure five hundred 
and sixtj-six miles of length. One hundred and forty- 
miles of street railway traverse them. Her wealth in 1882, 
was $112,000,000. Her imports are light, but no other 
American city save Kew York has such an annual export. 
Her harbor, varying from 60 to 280 feet in depth, and 
from 1,50D to 3,000 feet in width, measures twelve miles 
in length on either shore, and more than half of this is in 
actual use. In 1SS3, over 2,000,000 bales of cotton passed 
through her gates, to home or foreign markets. 

One of the many developments in the world's commerce, 
imforeseen by New Orleans in her da^'s of over-confidence, 
was the increase in the size of sea-going vessels. It had 
been steady and rapid, but was only noticed when the 
larger vessels began to shun the bars and mud-lumps of 
the river's mouths. In 1852 there were, for weeks, nearly 
forty ships aground there, suffering detentions of from 
two days to eight weeks. It is true, some slack-handed 
attention had been given to these bars from the earliest 
times. Even in 1T21, M. de Pauger, a French engineer, 
had recommended a system for scouring them awaj', by 
confining the cun-ent, not materially different from that 
which proved so successful one hundred and fifty years 
later. The United States Government made surveys and 
reports in 1829, '37, '39, '47, and '51. But, while nature was 
now shoaling one " pass " and now deepening another, the 
effort to keep them open artificially was not efficiently or 
persistently made. Dredging, harrowing, jettying, and 



LATER DAYS. 265 

side-canalling — all were proposed, and some were tried ; 
but nothing of a permanent character was effected. In 
1853 vessels were again grounding on the bars, where 
some of them remained for months. 

At leno;th, in 187J:, Mr. James B. Eads came forward 
with a proposition to secure a permanent channel in one 
of the passes, twenty-eight feet deep, by a system of jet- 
ties. He met with strenuous opposition from professional 
and unprofessional sources, but overcame both man and 
nature, and in July, 1879, successfully completed the work 
which has made him world-famous and which promises to 
Kew Orleans once more a magnificent future. Through 
a " pass " where a few years ago vessels of ten feet draft 
went aground, a depth of thirty feet is assured, and there 
are no ships built that may not come to her wharves. 
Capital has responded to this great change. Railroads 
have hurried and are hurrying down upon the city, and 
have joined her with Mexico and California ; manufactur- 
ing interests are multiplying steadily ; new energies, new 
ambitions, are felt by her people ; for the first time within 
a quarter of a century buildings in the heart of the town 
are being torn down to make room for better. As these 
lines are being written the city is engrossed in prepara- 
tions for a universal exposition projected on the largest 
scale ; the very Creole himself is going to ask the world to 
come and see him. In every department of life and every 
branch of society there is earnest, intelligent effort to remove 
old drawbacks and prepare for the harvests of richer years. 



XXXV. 



INUNDATIONS. 



r I ^HE people of New Orleans take pride in Canal Street. 
It is to the modern town what the Place d'Armes 
M'as to the old. Here stretch out in long parade, in va- 
riety of height and color, the great retail stores, display- 
ing their silken and fine linen and golden seductions ; and 
the fair Creole and American girls, and the self-deprecia- 
ting American mothers, and the majestic Creole matrons, 
all black lace and alabaster, swarm and hum and push in 
and out and flit here and there among the rich things, 
and fine things, the novelties and the bargains. Its eigh- 
teen-f eet sidewalks are loftily roofed from edge to edge by 
continuous balconies that on gala-days are stayed up with 
extra scantlings, and yet seem ready to come splintering 
down under the crowd of parasolled ladies sloping upward 
on them from front to back in the fashion of the amphi- 
theatre. Its two distinct granite-paved roadways are each 
forty feet wide, and the tree-bordered " neutral ground " 
between measures fifty-four feet across. It was " neutral " 
when it divided between the French quarter and the 



INUNDATIONS. 267 

American at the time when their " municipality " govei-n- 
nients were distinct from each other. 

In Canal Street, well-nigh all the street-car lines in 
town begin and end. The Grand Opera House is here ; 
also, the Art Union. The club-houses glitter here. If 
Jacksan Square has one bronze statue, Canal Street has 
another, and it is still an open question which is the worst. 
At the base of Henry Clay's pedestal, the j)eople rally to 
hear the demagogues in days of political fever, and the 
tooth-paste orator in nights of financial hypertrophy. 
Here are the grand reviews. Here the resplendent Mj-s- 
tic Krewe marches by calcium lights on carnival nights up 
one roadwaj'' and down the other, and 

' ' Perfume and flowers fall in showers, 
That lightly rain from ladies' hands." 

Here is the huge granite custom-house, that " never is 
but always to be " finished. Here is a row of stores monu- 
mental to the sweet memory of the benevolent old Portu- 
guese Jew whom Newport, Rhode Island, as well as jSTew 
Orleans, gratefully honors — Judah Touro. Here sit the 
^ower ma7'cha7ides, making bouquets of jasmines and roses, 
clove-pinks, violets, and lady-slippers. Here the Creole 
boys drink mead, and on the balconies above maidens and 
their valentines sip sherbets in the starlight. Here only, 
in j^ew Orleans, the American " bar " puts on a partial 
disguise. Here is the way to West End and to Spanish 
Fort, little lakeside spots of a diminished Coney Island 



268 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

sort. Here the gay cai-ri age-parties turn northwestward, 
scurrying away to the races. Yea, here the funeral train 
breaks into a trot toward the cemeteries of Metairie Ridge. 
Here is Christ's Clnirch, with its canopied weddings. 
Here the ring-politician mounts perpetual guard. Here 
the gambler seeks whom he may induce to walk around into 
his parlor in the Rue Royale or St. Charles Street. And 
here, in short, throng the members of the great Isew Orleans 
Creole- American house of " "Walker, Doolittle & Co." 

One does not need to be the the oldest resident to re- 
member when this neutral ground in Canal Street was still 
a place of tethered, horses, roaming goats, and fluttering 
lines of drying shirts and petticoats. In those days an 
old mule used to drag his dejected way slowly round and 
round in an unchanging circle on the shabby grassed ave- 
nue, just behind the spot where the statue of Henry Clay 
was later erected by good Whigs in 1S50. An aged and 
tattered negro was the mule's ringmaster, and an artesian 
well was the object of his peaceful revolution. 

Ko effort deeply to probe the city's site had ever before 
been made, nor has there been any later attempt thus to 
draw up the pre-liistoric records of the Delta. The allu- 
vial surface deposit is generally two or three feet thick, 
and rests on a substratum of uniform and tenacious blue 
clay. The well in Canal Street found this clay fifteen feet 
deep. Below it lay four feet more of the same clay mixed 
with woody matter. Under this was a mixture of sand 
and clay ten feet thick, resembling the annual deposits of 



INUNDATIONS. 269 

the river; Beneath tliis was found, one after another, 
continual, irregular alternations of these clay strata, some- 
times a foot, sometimes sixty feet thick, and layers of sand 
and shells and of mixtures of these with clay. Sometimes 
a stratum of quicksand was passed. At five hundred and 
eighty-two feet was encountered a layer of hard pan ; but 
throughout no masses of rock were found, only a few 
water-worn pebbles and some contorted and perforated 
stones. No abundance of water flowed. Still, in the 
shabby, goat-haunted neutral ground above, gaped at by 
the neutral crowd, in the wide, blinding heat of midsum- 
mer, the long lever continued to creak round its tremu- 
lous circle. At length it stopped. At a depth of six hun- 
dred and thirty feet the well was abandoned — for vague 
reasons left to the custody of tradition ; some say the 
mule died, some say the negro. 

However, the work done was not without value. It 
must have emphasized the sanitary necessity for an elabo- 
rate artificial drainage of the city's site, and it served to 
contradict a very prevalent and solicitous outside belief 
that Xew Orleans was built on a thin crust of mud, which 
siie might at any moment break through, when towers, 
spires, and all would ingloriously disappear. The continual 
alternations of tough clay and loose sand and shells in such 
variable thicknesses gave a clear illustration of the condi- 
tions of Delta soil that favor the undermining of the Mis- 
sissippi banks and their fall into the river at low stages of 
water, levees being often carried with them. 



270 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

These cavings are not generally crevasses. A crevasse 
is commonly the result of the levee yielding to the press- 
m'e of the river's waters, heaped np against it often to the 
height of ten or fifteen feet above the level of the land. 
But the caving-in of old levees requires their replacement 
by new and higher ones on the lower land farther back, 




A Crevasse. (Story's Plantation, 1882.) 

and a crevasse often occurs through the weakness of a 
new levee which is not yet solidified, or whose covering 
of tough Bei-muda turf has not yet grown. The fact is 
widely familiar, too, that when a craw-fish has burrowed 
in a levee, the water of the river may squirt in and out of 
this little tunnel, till a section of the levee becomes satu- 
rated and softened, and sometimes slides shoreward bodily 



INUNDATIONS. 271 

from its base, and lets in the flood, — roaring, leaping, and 
tumbling over the rich plantations and down into the 
swamp behind them, levelling, tearing up, drowning, de- 
stroying, and sweeping away as it goes. 

New Orleans may be inundated either by a crevasse or 
by the rise of backwater on its northern side from Lake 
Pontchartrain. Bayou St. John is but a prehistoric cre- 
vasse minus only the artificial levee. A long-prevailing 
southeast wind will obstruct the outflow of the lake's 
waters through the narrow passes by which they commonly 
reach the Gulf of Mexico, and the rivers and old crevasses 
emptying into the lake from the north" and east will be 
virtually poured into the streets of Xew Orleans. A vio- 
lent storm blowing across Pontchartrain from the north 
produces the same result. At certain seasons, the shores 
of river, lake, and canals have to be patrolled day ' and 
night to guard the wide, shallow basin in which the city 
lies from the insidious encroachments of the waters that 
overhang it on every side. 

It is difficult, in a faithful description, to avoid giving 
an exaggerated idea of these floods. Certainly, large por- 
tions of the city are inundated ; miles of streets become 
canals. The waters rise into yards and gardens and then 
into rooms. Skiffs enter the poor man's parlor and bed- 
room to bring the morning's milk or to carry away to 
hio;lier ground his o-oods and chattels. All manner of 
loose stuff floats about the streets ; the house-cat sits on 
the gate-post ; huge rats come swimming, in mute and 



272 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

loathsome despair, from tliat house to this one, and are 
pelted to death from the windows. Even snakes seek the 
same asylum. Those who have the choice avoid such dis- 
tricts, and the city has consequently lengthened out awk- 
wardly along the higher grounds down, and especially np, 
the river shore. 

But the town is not ingulfed ; life is not endangered ; 
trade goes on in its main districts mostly dry-shod, and the 
nierchant goes and comes between his home and his count- 
ing-room as usual in the tinkling street-cars, merely catch- 
ing glimpses of the water down the cross streets. 

The humbler classes, on the other hand, suffer severely. 
Their gardens and poultry are destroyed, their houses and 
household goods are damaged ; their working days are dis- 
counted. The rich and the authorities, having defaulted 
in the ounce of preventive, come forward with their in- 
effectual pound of cure ; relief committees are formed and 
skiffs ply back and forth distributing bread to the thus 
doubly humbled and doubly damaged poor. 

No considerable increase of sickness seems to follow 
these overflows. They cannot moi'e completely drench so 
ill-drained a soil than would au}^ long term of rainy 
weather ; but it hardly need be said that neither condition 
is healthful under a southern sky. 

In the beginning of the town's existence, the floods 
came almost yearly, and for a long time afterward they 
were frequent. The old moat and palisaded embankment 
around the Spanish town did not always keep them out. 



IXUNDATIOXS. 273 

Tliere was a disastrous one in 1780, when the Creoles 
were strained to the utmost to bear tlie burdens of their 
daring young Governor Galvez's campaigns against the 
British. Another occurred in 1785, when Miro was gov- 
ernor ; another in 1791, the last year of his incumbency ; 
another in 1799. All these came from river crevasses 
above the town. The last occurred near where Carrollton, 
now part of Xew Orleans, was afterward built. Another 
overflow, in 1813, came from a crevasse only a mile or two 
above this one. 

Next followed the noted overflow of May, 1816. The 
same levee that had broken in 1799 was undermined by 
the current, which still strikes the bank at Carrollton with 
immense power ; it gave way and the floods of the Missis- 
sippi poured through the break. On the fourth day after- 
ward, the waters had made their way across sugar-fields 
and through swamps and into the rear of the little city, 
had covered the suburbs of Gravier, Treme, and St. Jean 
with from three to five feet of their tm-bid, yellow flood, 
and were crawling up toward the front of the river-side 
suburbs — Montegut, La Course, Ste. Marie, and Marigny. 
In those days, the corner of Canal and Chartres Streets 
was only some three hundred yards from the river shore. 
The flood came up to it. One could take a skiff at that 
point and row to Dauphine Street, down Dauphine to 
Bienville, down Bienville to Burgundj^, in Burgundy to 
St. Louis Street, from St. Louis to Bampart, and so 

throughout the rear suburbs, now the Quadroon quarter. 
18 



274 



THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 



The breach was stopped by sinking in it a three-masted 
vessel. The waters found vent through Bayous St. John 
and Bienvenu to the hike ; but it was twenty-five days be- 
fore they were quite gone. This twelvemonth was the 
healthiest in a period of forty years. 



n 







In the Quadroon Quarter. 

In 1831, a storm blew the waters of Lake Pontchartrain 
np to within six hundred j^ards of the levee. The same 
thing occurred in October, 1837, when Ijankruptcy as well 
as back waters swamped the town. The same waters were 
driven almost as far in 1844, and again in 1846. 

It would seem as if town pride alone would have seized 
a spade and thrown up a serviceable levee around the city. 



INUXDATIOXS. 275 

But town pride in Xew Orleans was only born about 1836^ 
and was a puny child. Xot one American in five looked 
on the place as his permanent home. As for those who 
did, the life they had received from their fathers had be- 
come modified. Some of them were a native generation. 
Creole contact had been felt. The same influences, too, 
of climate, landscape, and institutions, that had made the 
Creole unique was de-Saxonizing the American of the 
" Second Municipality," and giving special force to those 
two traits which everywhere characterized the slave-holder 
— improvidence, and that feudal self-completeness which 
looked with indolent contempt upon public co-operative 
measures. 

The Creole's answer to suggestive inquiry concerning 
the prevention of overflows, it may easily be guessed, was 
a short, warm question : " How ? " He thought one ought 
to tell him. He has ten good " cannots " to one small 
" can " — or once had ; the proportion is better now, and 
so is the drainage ; and still, heat, moisture, malaria, and 
provincial exile make a Creole of whoever settles down 
beside him. 

In 1836, a municipal draining company was formed, 
and one draining w^ieel erected at Bayou St. John. In 
1838, a natural drain behind the American quarter was 
broadened and deepened into a foul ditch known as 
Melpomene Canal. And in 1819, came the worst inunda- 
tion the city has ever suffered. 



XXXVI. 

SAUVE'S CREVASSE. 

f~\^ tlie 3d of May, 1849, the Mississippi was higher 
^■"^ than it had been before in twenty-one years. Every 
here and there it was licking the levee's crown, swinging 
heavily around the upper end of its great bends, gliding 
in wide, enormous volume down upon the opposite bank 
below, heaving its vast weight and force against the 
earthen barrier, fretting, quaking, recoiling, boiling like 
a pot, and turning again and billowing away like a mon- 
strous yellow serpent, crested with its long black line of 
driftwood, to throw itself once more against the farther 
bank, in its mad, blind search for outlet. 

Everywhere, in such times, the anxious Creole planter 
may be seen, broad-hatted and swarthy, standing on his 
levee's top. All night the uneasy lantern of the patrol 
flits along the same line. Rills of seepage water wet the 
road — which in Louisiana always runs along against the 
levee's inner side — and here and there make miry places. 
" Cribs " are being built around weak spots. Sand-bags 
are held in readiness. The huge, ungainly cane-carts, 
with their high, broad-tired wheels and flaring blue bodies, 



sauve's crevasse. 279 

each drawn by three sunburned mules abreast, come hmi- 
bering from the sugar-house yard with loads of hagasse, 
with which to give a fibrous hold to the hasty earthworks 
called for by the hour's emergency. Here, at the most 
dangerous spot, the muscular strength of the estate is 
grouped ; a saddled horse stands hitched to the road-side 
fence ; the overseer is giving his short, emphatic orders in 
the negro French of the plantations, and the black man, 
glancing ever and anon upon him with his large brown 
eye, comes here and goes there, li vini \'i, II courri Id. 
"Will they be able to make the levee stand ? x^obody 
knows. 

In 1849, some seventeen miles above Xew Orleans by 
the river's course, and on the same side of the stream, was 
Sauve's plantation. From some cause, known or unknown, 
— sometimes the fact is not even suspected, — the levee 
along its river-front was weak. In the afternoon of the 
3d of May, the great river suddenly burst through it, and, 
instantly defying all restraints, plunged down over the 
land, roaring, rolling, writhing, sprawling, whirling, over 
pastures and cane-fields and rice-fields, through groves and 
negro quarters and sugar-houses, slipping through rose- 
hedged lanes and miles of fence, gliding through willow 
jungles and cypress forests, on and on, to smite in rear 
and flank the city that, seventeen miles away, lay peering 
alertly over its front breastworks. The people of the 
town M-ere not, at first, concerned. They believed and 
assured each other the water would find its way across into 



280 THE CKEOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

Lake Pontcliartrain without coming down upon them. 
The Americans exceeded the Creoles in absokite torpor. 
They tlirew np no line behind their mnnicipahty. Every 
da}^ that passed saw the swamp hlHng more and more with 
yellow water ; presently it crawled up into the suburbs, 
and when the twelfth day had gone by, Eampart Street, 
the old town's rear boundary, was covered. 

The Creoles, in their quarter, had strengthened the 
small levee of canal Carondelet on its lower side and shut 
off the advancing flood from the district beyond it ; but 
Lafayette and the older American quarter were completely 
exposed. The water crept on daily for a fortnight longer. 
In the suburb Bouligny, afterward part of Jefferson or the 
Sixth District, it reached to Camp Street. In Lafayette, 
it stopped within thirty yards of where these words are 
being written, and withdrawing toward the forest, ran 
along behind Bacchus (Baronne) Street, sometimes touch- 
ing Carondelet, till it reached Canal Street, crossed that 
street between Koyal and Bourbon, and thence stretched 
downward and backward to the Old Basin. " About two 
hundred and twenty inhabited squares were flooded, more 
than two thousand tenements surrounded by water, and a 
population of nearly twelve thousand souls driven from 
their homes or compelled to live an aquatic life of much 
privation and suffering." 

In the meantime, hundreds of men, white and black, 
were constantly at the breach in the levee, trying to close 
it. Pickets, sand-bags, hagasse, were all in vain. Seven 



SAUVij'S CEEVASSE. 281 

hundred feet of piling were driven, but unskilfully placed ; 
a ship's hull was filled with stone and sunk in the half- 
closed opening, but the torrent burrowed around it and 
swept away the works. Other unskilled efforts failed, and 
only on the third of June was professional scientific aid 
called in, and seventeen days afterward the crevasse was 
closed. 

At length, the long- submerged streets and sidewalks 
rose sliniily out of the retreating waters, heavy rains fell 
opportunely and washed into the swamp the offensive 
deposits that had threatened a second distress, and the 
people set about repairing their disasters. The streets 
were in sad dilapidation. The Second Municipality alone 
levied, in the following year, four hundred thousand dol- 
lars to cover " actual expenditures on streets, wharves, and 
crevasses." The wharves were, most likely, in the main, 
new work. A levee was thrown up behind the munici- 
pality along the line of Claiborne Street and up Felicity 
road to Carondelet Street. 

Still overflows came, and came, and overcame. A 
serious one occurred only four years ago.' At such times, 
the fortunate are nobly generous to the unfortunate ; but 
the distress passes, the emotional impulses pass with it, 
and precautions for the future are omitted or soon fall 
into neglect. The inundation of ISSO simply overran the 
dilapidated top of a neglected levee on the town's lake 



1880. 



282 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

side. The uneconomical habits of the old South still cling. 
Private burdens are but faintlj recognized, and the next 
norther may swamp the little fortunes of the city's hard- 
working poor. 

The hopeful in New Orleans look for an early day when 
a proper drainage system shall change all this, — a system 
which shall include underground sewerage and complete 
the levee, already partly made, which is to repeat on a 
greatly enlarged scale, above and below the city and along 
the lake shore behind it, the old wall and moat that once 
surrounded the Spanish town in Canal, Rampart, and Es- 
planade Streets. The present system consists merely of a 
poor and partial surface drainage in open street-gutters, 
emptying into canals at whose further end the waters are 
lifted over the rear levees by an appliance of old Dutch 
paddle-wheel pumps run by steam. Even the sudden 
heavy showers that come wdth their singeing lightnings 
and ear-cracking peals of thunder, are enough, at present, 
to overflow the streets of the whole town, often from sill 
to sill of opposite houses and stores, holding the life of a 
great city water-bound for hours, making strange arch- 
way and door-way groups of beggar and lady, clerk, fop, 
merchant, artisan, fruit-peddler, negro porter, priest, 
tattered girl, and every other sort of fine or pitiful human 
nature. 

An adequate system, comprising a thorough under- 
drainage, \vould virtually raise the city's whole plain ten 
feet, and give a character of soil under foot incalculably 



sauve's ceevasse. 283 

valuable for the improvement it would effect in the health 
and energies of the people. Such a system is entii-ely 
feasible, is within the people's means, has been tested else- 
where, extensively and officially approved, and requires 
only the subscription of capital. 

But we go astray. We have got out upon the hither 
side of those volcanoes of civil war and reconstruction 
which it were wiser for a time yet to stop short of. Let 
us draw back once more for a last view of the " Crescent 
City's " earlier and calmer, though once tumultuous and 
all too tragic, past. 



XXXVII. 

THE DAYS OF PESTILENCE. 

rr^IIE New Orleans resident congratulates himself — and 
he does well — that he is not as other men are, in 
other great cities, as to breathing-room. The desperate 
fondness with which the Creole still clings to domestic 
isolation has passed into the sentiment of all types of the 
city's life ; and as the way is always open for the town, 
with just a little river-sand filling, to spread farther and 
farther, there is no hnddling in Xew Orleans, or only very 
little here and there. 

There is assurance of plenty not only as to space, but 
also as to time. Time may be money, but money is not 
everything, and so there never has been much crowding 
over one another's heads about business centres, never any 
living in sky-reaching strata. The lassitude which loads 
every warm, damp breeze that blows in across the all-sur- 
rounding marsh and swamp has always been against what 
an old JSTew Orleans writer calls "knee-cracking stair- 
ways." Few houses lift their roofs to dizzy heights, and 
a third-story bedroom is not near enough to be coveted by 
many. 



THE DAYS OF PESTILEISTCE. 285 

Shortly before the war — and the case is not materially 
changed in Xew Orleans to-day — the number of inmates 
to a dwelling was in the proportion of six and a half to 
one. In St. Louis, it was seven and three-quarters ; in 
Cincinnati, it was more than eight ; in Boston, nearly nine ; 
and in Xew York, over thirteen and a half. The number 
of persons to the acre was a little more than forty-five. 
In Philadelphia, it was eighty ; in Boston, it was eighty- 
two ; in New York, it was one hundred and thirty-five. 

The climate never would permit such swarming in New 
Orleans. Neither would the badly scavenged streets or 
the soil which, just beneath, reeks with all the foul liquids 
that human and brute life can produce in an unsewered 
city. It is fortunate that the average New Orleans dwell- 
ing is loosely thrown together, built against sun and rain, 
not wind and frost. This, with the ample spacings be- 
tween houses, and an open plain all round, insures circula- 
tion of air — an air that never blows extremes of hot or 
cold. 

It is true the minimum temperature is lower than that 
on the sea-coast of California, in pai-t of Arizona, and in 
South Florida. That of the Gulf coasts and the Atlantic 
shores of Georgia and South Carolina is the same. But 
in every other part of the United States it is lower. 
Once only the thermometer has been known to sink to 
sixteen degrees Fahrenheit. Its mean January tempera- 
ture is fifty-five degrees to sixty degrees Fahrenheit, milder 
than that of any other notable city in the Union, except 



286 THE CEEOLES OF LOUISIAXA. 

Galveston and Mobile, which have the same. Only Middle 
and Southern Florida have a warmer midwinter. As to 
its summers, every State and Territory, except the five 
Kew England States east and north of Connecticut, expe- 
riences in some portion of it a higher maximum tempera- 
ture than the land of the Creoles, and the entire country 
as high a temperature, except parts of California, Oregon, 
Washington Territory, and two or three regions directly 
within the Rocky Mountains. Even its mean temj^erature 
in the hottest month of the year, Julj', is only the same, 
eighty to eighty-five degrees, as that in every part of the 
South that is not mountainous, even to the mouth of the 
Ohio, with the Indian Territory and two-thirds of Kansas. 
Only three times since 1819 has it risen to one hundred 
degrees, and never beyond. Whatever wind prevails 
comes tempered by the waters and wet lands over which 
it has blown. The duration of this moderate heat, how- 
ever, is what counts. The mean temperature of isew 
Orleans for the year exceeds that of any region not on the 
Gulf. It is exceeded only in southernmost Florida. That 
of Arkansas, middle Mississippi, middle Georgia, and South 
Carolina is ten degrees cooler, and the northeastern quar- 
ter of Alabama, North Georgia, and Western North Caro- 
lina have a mean fifteen, twenty, and in the mountainous 
parts, thirty and more degrees lower. The humidity, 
moreover, is against strong vitality. The country is not 
to be called a rainy one ; there is no rainy season ; but the 
rains, when they come, are very heavy. Over five feet depth 



THE DAYS OF PESTILENCE. 287 

of water falls yearly on this land of swamps and marshes 
south of the thirty-first parallel between Lake Sabine 
and Apalachee Bay ; a fall from four to six times as 
great as the rainfall in the arid regions of the far "West, 
more than twice the average for the whole area of the 
United States, and greater than that experienced by over 
ninety-eight per cent, of the whole population. The air's 
diminished evaporating powers make it less cooling to man 
and beast in summer and more chilling in winter than drier 
winds at greater and lower temperatures would be, and 
it comes always more or less charged with that uncanny 
quality which Creoles, like all other Is'orth Americans, 
maintain to be never at home, but always next door — 
malaria. 

The city does not tremble with ague ; but malarial 
fevers stand high in the annual tables of mortality, almost 
all complaints are complicated by more or less malarial 
influence, and the reduction of vital force in the daily life 
of the whole population is such as few residents, except 
physicians, appreciate. Lately, however, — we linger in 
the present but a moment, — attention has turned to the 
fact that the old Creole life, on ground floors, in a damp, 
warm climate, over an undrained clay soil, has given 
more victims to malarial and tubercular diseases than yel- 
low fever has claimed, and efforts to remove these condi- 
tions or offset their ill effects are giving a yearly improv- 
ing public health. 

What figures it would require truthfully to indicate the 



288 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

early insalubrity of Xew Orleans it would be hard to 
guess. Govei'nor Perier, in 1720, and the Baron Caron- 
delet, toward the close of the last century, stand alone as 
advocates for measures to reduce malarial and putrid fe- 
vers. As time wore on, partial surface drainage, some 
paving, some improvement in house-building, wiser do- 
mestic life, the gradual retreat of the dank forest and 
undergrowth, a better circulation of air, and some reduc- 
tion of humidity, had their good effects. Drainage canals 
— narrow, shallow, foul, ill-placed things — began to be 
added one by one. When a system of municipal cleans- 
ing came in, it was made as vicious as ingenuity could 
contrive it ; or, let us say, as bad as in other American 
cities of the time. 

!Keitlier the Creole nor the American ever accepts sep- 
ulture in the ground of Orleans Parish. Only the He- 
brew, whose religious law will not take no for an answer, 
and the pauper, lie down in its undrained soil. The 
tombs stand above ground. They are now made of brick 
or stone only ; but in earlier days wood entered into their 
construction, and they often fell into decay so early as to 
expose the bones of the dead. Every day the ground, 
which the dead shunned, became more and more poison- 
ous, and the city spread out its homes of the living more 
and more over the poisoned ground. In 1830, the pop- 
ulation of New Orleans was something over forty-six thou- 
sand ; her life was busy, her commerce great, her precau- 
tions against nature's penalties for human herding about 



THE DAYS OF PESTILENCE. 289 

equal to nothing. Slie was fully ripe for the visitation 
that was in store. 

In that year the Asiatic cholera passed around the 
shores of the Caspian Sea, entered European Russia, and 
moved slowly westward, preceded by terror and followed 
by lamentation. In October, 1831, it was in England. 
In January, 1832, it swept through London. It passed 
into Scotland, into Ireland, Erance, Spain, Italy. It 
crossed the Atlantic and ravaged the cities of its western 
shore ; and, on the 25th of October, it reached !N"ew Orleans. 

An epidemic of yellow fever had been raging, and had 
not yet disappeared. Many of the people had fled from 
it. The population was reduced to about thirty-five thou- 
sand. How many victims the new pestilence carried off 
can never be known ; but six thousand, over one-sixth of 
the people, fell in twenty days. On some days five 
hundred persons died. For once, the rallying- ground 
of the people was not the Place d'Armes. The ceme- 
teries were too small. Trenches took the place of graves ; 
the dead were hauled to them, uncoffined, in cart-loads 
and dumped in. Large numbers were carried by night 
to the river-side, weighted with stones from the ballast- 
piles abreast the idle shipping, and thrown into the 
Mississippi. The same mortality in New Orleans with its 
present population would carry off, in three weeks, thirty- 
nine thousand victims. The Xew Basin was being dug by 
hand. Hundreds of Irish were standing here in water 

and mud and sun, throwing up the corrupted soil with 
19 



290 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

their shovels, and the havoc among them, says tradition, 
was awf uL 

The history' of the town shows tliat years of much sum- 
mer-digging have always been years of great mortality. 
In 1811, when Carondelef s old canal was cleaned out, 
seven per cent, of the people died. In 1818, when it was 
cleaned out again, seven per cent, again died. In 1S22, 
when its cleaning out was again begun, eight and a half 
per cent. died. In 1833, when, the year after the great 
cholera fatality, the Xew Canal was dug to the lake, eight 
and a lialf per cent, again died. In 1837, when many 
draining trenches were dug, seven per cent. died. In 1847, 
there was much new ditching, Melpomene Canal was 
cleaned out, and over eight per cent, of the people died. 
The same work went on through '48 and '49, and seven 
and eight per cent. died. But never before or after 1832 
did death recruit his pale annies by so frightful a con- 
scription, in this pLague-haunted town, as marked that 
year of double calamity, when, from a total population 
of but fifty-five thousand, present and absent, over eiglit 
thousand fell before their Asian and African destroyers. 



XXXVIIL 



THE GREAT EPIDEMIC. 



rpilREE-QUARTERS of a century had passed over 
the little Franco-Spanish town, hidden nnder the 
Mississippi's downward-retreating bank in the edge of 
its Delta swamp on Orleans Island, before the sallow 
spectre of yellow fever was distinctly recognized in her 
streets and in her darkened chambers. 

That it had come and gone earlier, but unidentified, is 
altogether likely. In 1TG6 especially, the year in which 
Ulloa came wdth his handful of Ilavanese soldiers to take 
possession for Spain, there was an epidemic which at 
least resembled the great West Indian scourge. Under 
the commercial concessions that followed, the town ex- 
panded into a brisk port. Trade with the West Indies 
grew, and in 1796, the yellow fever w^as confronted and 
called by name. 

From that date it appeared frequently if not yearly, 
and between that date and the present day twenty-four 
lighter and thirteen violent epidemics have marked its 
visitations. At their own horrid caprice they came and 
went. In 1S21, a quarantine of some sort was established. 



292 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIATs'A. 

and it was continued nntil 1825 ; but it did not keep out 
the plague, and it was then abandoned for more than 
thirty years. Between 1837 and 181:3, fifty-five hundred 
deatlis occurred from the fever. In the summer and fall 
of 1847, over twenty-eight hundred people perished by 
it. In the second half of 1818, eight hundred and seventy- 
two were its victims. It had barely disappeared when 
cholera entered again and carried off forty-one hundred. 
A month after its disappearance, — in August, 1819, — the 
fever returned ; and when, at the end of JSlovember, it 
had destroyed seven hundred and forty-four persons, the 
cholera once more appeared ; and by the end of 1S50 had 
added eighteen hundred and fifty-one to the long rolls. 

In the very midst of these visitations, it was the confi- 
dent conviction and constant assertion of the average Kew 
Orleans citizen, Creole or American, on his levee, in the 
St. Charles rotunda, at his counting-room desk, in the 
columns of his newspaper, and in his family circle, that 
his town was one of the healthiest in the world. The 
fatality of the epidemics was principally among the un- 
acclimated. lie was not insensible to their sufferings, he 
was famous for his care of the sick ; the town was dotted 
with orphan asylums. But in this far-away corner crucial 
comparisons escaped him. The Creole did not readily 
take the fever, and, taking it, commonly recovered. He 
had, and largely retains still, an absurd belief in his entire 
immunity from attack. When he has it, it is something 
else. As for strangers, — he threw up his palms and eye- 



THE GEEAT EPIDEMIC. 293 

brows, — nobody asked tliem to come to Xew Orleans. 
The mind of the American turned only to commerce ; 
and the commercial value of a well-authenticated low 
death-rate he totally overlooked. Every summer might 
bring plague — granted; but winter brought trade, wealth. 
It thundered and tumbled, through the streets like a surf. 
The part of a good citizen seemed to be to shut his eyes 
tightly and drown comment and debate with loud asser- 
tions of the town's salubrity. 

It was in these days that a certain taste for books 
showed itself, patronized and dominated by commerce. 
De Bow's excellent monthly issue, the Commercial He- 
view of the South and West, was circulating its invalu- 
able statistics and its pro-Southern deductions in social 
and political science. Judah P. Benjamin wrote about 
sugar ; so did Yalcour-Aime ; Riddell treated of Missis- 
sippi River deposits, etc. ; Maunsell White gave reminis- 
cences of flat-boat navigation ; Chief Justice Martin wrote 
on contract of sale; E. J. Forstall on Louisiana history in 
French archives ; and a great many anonymous " Ladies 
of Kew Orleans " and " Gentlemen of ]^ew Orleans " and 
elsewhere, upon the absorbing topic of slavery — to while 
away the time, as it were. " Xew Orleans, disguise the 
fact as we may," wrote De Bow in 1846, "has had abroad 
the reputation of being a great charnel-house. 
We meet this libel with facts." But he gave no figures. 
In January, 1851, the mayor officially pronounced the city 
" perfectly healthy during the past year," etc., omitting to 



294 



THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 



say that the mortality liad been three times as high as a 
moderate death-rate would have been. A few medical men 
alone, — Barton, Symonds, Fenner, Axson, — had begun to 
drag from oblivion the city's vital statistics and to publish 
facts that should have alarmed any community. But the 




-^4 .• ' 



A Cemetery Walk. (Tombs and " Ovens.") 



blind are not frightened with ghosts. Barton showed that 
the mortality of 184:9, over and above the deaths by cholera, 
had been about twice the common average of Boston, Isew 
York, Philadelphia, or Charleston. AVhat then ? Noth- 
ing. He urged under-ground sewerage in vain. Quar- 
antine was proposed; commerce frowned. A plan was 



THE GREAT EPIDEMIC. 295 

offered for daily flushing the city's innumerable open 
street-gutters ; it was rejected. The vice of burying in 
tombs above ground in the heart of town was shown ; but 
the burials went on. 

As the year 1853 drew near, a climax of evil conditions 
seemed to be approached. The city became more dread- 
fullv unclean than before. The scavensino; was beino- 
tried on a contract system, and the " foul and nauseous 
steams" from gutters, alleys, and dark nooks became in- 
tolerable. In the merchants' interest Carondelet basin 
and canal were being once more dug out ; the New Canal 
was being widened ; gas and water mains were being ex- 
tended ; in the Fourth District, Jackson Street and St. 
Charles Avenue wei-e being excavated for the road-beds of 
their railways. In the Third District, many small drain- 
ing; trenches were beino- duo-. 

On the 12tli of March, the ship Augusta sailed from 
Bremen for !New Orleans with upward of two hundred 
emigrants. Thirteen days afterward the Nor'thaonjpion 
left Liverpool, bound in the same direction, with between 
three and four hundred Irish. She had sickness on board 
during the voyage, and some deaths. The Augusta had 
none. While these were on their way, the bark /Siri, in the 
port of Rio de Janeiro, lost her captain and several of her 
crew by j^ellow fever, and afterward sailed for IS^ew Orleans. 
The ship Camboden Castle cleared from Kingston, Jamaica, 
for the same port, leaving seven of her crew dead of the 
fever. On the 9th of May, the NorthamiAon and the 8iri 



296 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIAISTA. 

arrived in tlie Mississippi. The Northamjpton was towed 
to the city alone, and on the 10th was moored at a wharf in 
the Fourth District, at the head of Josephine Street. The 
Siiri was towed np in company Avith another vessel, the 
Saxon. She was dropped at a wharf in the First District. 
The Saxon moved on and rested some distance away, at 
a wharf opposite the waterworks reservoir, in front of 
Market Street. The J^orthampton was found to be very 
foul. Hands sent aboard to unload and clean her left on 
the next day, believing they had detected "black vomit" 
in her hospital. One of them fell sick of yellow fever 
three days after, but recovered. A second force was em- 
ployed ; several became ill ; this was on the 17th. On 
the same day, the Augusta and the Camboden Castle en- 
tered the harbor in the same tow. The Cainhoden Castle 
was moored alongside the Saxon. At the next wharf, 
two or three hundred feet below, lay abreast the Niagara 
and the Harvest Queen. The Augusta passed on up and 
cast off her tow-lines only when she was moored close to 
the Northam])ton. The emigrants went ashore. Five 
thousand landed in ISTew Orleans that year. Here, then, 
was every condition necessary to the outbreak of a pesti- 
lence, whether indigenous, imported, or both. 

On the same day that the fever broke out on the JSforth- 
amjyton it appeared also on the Augusta. About the 
same time it showed itself in one or two distant parts of 
the city without discernible connection with the shipping. 
On the 29th, it appeared on the Harvest Queen, and, five 



THE GREAT EPIDEMIC. 297 

dajs later, on the Saxon. The Niagara had put to sea ; 
but, on the 8th, the fever broke out on her and carried off 
the captain and a number of the crew. Two fatal cases 
in the town the attending physician reported under a 
disguised term, " not wishing to create alarm." Such was 
the inside, hidden history of the Great Epidemic's begin- 
ning. 

On the 27th of May, one of the emigrants from the 
Northaijvpton was brought to the charity hospital. He 
had been four days ill, and he died the next day, of yel- 
low fever. The Board of Health made official report of 
the case ; but the daily papers omitted to publish it. 
Other reports followed in June ; they were shunned in 
the same way, and the great city, with its one hundred 
and fifty-four thousand people, one in every ten of whom 
was to die that year, remained in slumberous ignorance 
of the truth. It was one of the fashions. On the 2d of 
July, twenty-five deaths from yellow fever were reported 
for the closing week. Many "fever centres" had been 
developed. Three or four of tliem pointed, for their ori- 
gin, straight back to the WorthamjMon ; one to the Axt- 
gusta^ and one to the Saxon. 

A season of frequent heavy rains, alternating with hot 
suns and calms — the worst of conditions — set in. At the 
end of the next week, fifty-nine deaths were reported. 
There had not been less, certainly, than three hundred cases, 
and the newspapers slowly and one by one began to ad- 
mit the presence of danger. But the truth was already 



298 THE CEEOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

guessed, and alarm and dismay lurked everywhere. Not 
in every breast, however ; there were still those who 
looked about with rather impatient surprise, and — often 
in Creole accent, and often not — begged to be told what 
was the matter. The deaths around them, they insisted, 
in print, were at that moment "fewer in number than in 
any other city of similar population in the Union." 

Indeed, the fever was still only prowling distantly in 
those regions most shunned by decent feet and clean robes ; 
about Kousseau Street, and the like, along the Fourth 
District river-front, where the forlorner German immi- 
grants boarded in damp and miry squalor ; in the places 
where such little crowded living as there was in the town 
was gathered ; Lynch's Kow and other blocks and courts 
in the filthy Irish quarters of St. Thomas and Tchoupi- 
toulas streets ; and the foul, dark dens about the French 
market and the Mint, in the old French quarter ; among 
the Gascon "uaclieries and houcheries, of repulsive unclean- 
ness, on the upper and rear borders of the Fourth Dis- 
trict ; and around Gormley's Basin — a small artificial har- 
bor at the intersection of Dryades Walk and Felicity Koad, 
for the wood-cutters and shingle-makers of the swamp, 
and " a pestilential muck-and-mire pool of dead animals 
and filth of every kind." 

But suddenly the contagion leaped into the midst of 
the people. In the single w^eek ending July 16th, two 
hundred and four persons were carried to the cemeteries. 
A panic seized the town. Everywhere porters were toss- 



THE GREAT EPIDEMIC. 299 

ing trunks into wagons, carriages rattling over the stones 
and whirling out across the broad white levee to the 
steamboats' sides. Foot-passengers were hurrying along 
the sidewalk, luggage and children in hand, and out of 
breath, many a one with the plague already in his pulse. 
The fleeing crowd was numbered by thousands. 

During the following week, the charity hospital alone 
received from sixty to one hundred patients a day. Its 
floors were covered with the sick. From the IGtli to the 
23d, the deaths averaged sixty-one a day. Presently, the 
average ran up to seventy-nine. The rains continued, with 
much lightning and thunder. The weather became tropi- 
cal ; the sun was scorching hot and the shade chilly. The 
streets became heavy with nnid, the air stifling with bad 
odors, and the whole town a perfect Constantinople for 
foulness. 

August came on. The week ending the Gth showed one 
liundred and eighty-seven deaths from other diseases, an 
enormous death-rate, to M'liich the fever added nine hun- 
dred and forty-seven victiins. For a week, the deaths in 
the charity hospital — where the poor immigrants lay — had 
been one every half hour. 

The next day two hundred and twenty-eight persons 
died. The pestilence had attacked the Creoles and the 
blacks. In every direction were confusion, fright, flight, 
calls for aid, the good "Howards" hurrying from door to 
door, widows and orphans weeping, till the city was, as an 
eye-witness says, a " theatre of horrors." 



300 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

"Alas," cried one of the city journals, "we have not 
even grave-diggers ! " Five dollars an hour failed to liire 
enough of them. Some of the dead went to the tomb 
still with pomp and martial honors ; but the city scaven- 
gers, too, with their carts, went knocking from house to 
house asking if there were any to be buried. Long rows 
of coffins were laid in furrows scarce two feet deep, and 
hurriedly covered with a few shovelf ulls of earth, which 
the daily rains washed away, and the whole mass was 
left, "filling the air far and near with the most intolerable 
pestilential odors." Around the grave-yards funeral trains 
jostled and quarrelled for place, in an air reeking with 
the effluvia of the earlier dead. Many " fell to work and 
buried their own dead." Many sick died in carriages and 
carts. Many were found dead in their beds, in stores, in 
the streets. Yice and crime broke out fiercely : the police 
were never so busy. Heroism, too, was seen on every 
hand. Hundreds toiled for the comfort of sick and dying, 
and hundreds fell victims to their own noble self-abnega- 
tion. Forty-five distant cities and towns sent relief. 

On one day, the 11th of August, two hundred and three 
persons died of the fever. In the week ending two days 
later, the total deaths were fourteen hundred and ninety- 
four. Kain fell every day for two months. Streets be- 
came so bad that hearses could scarcely reach the cem- 
eteries. On the 20th, the week's mortality was fifteen 
hundred and thirty-four. 

Despair now seemed the only reasonable frame of mind. 



THE CtEeat epidemic. 301 

In tlie sky above, every new day brought the same merci- 
less conditions of atmosphere. The earth below bubbled 
with poisonous gases. Those who would still have fled 
the scene saw no escape. To leave by ship was to court 
the overtaking stroke of the plague beyond the reach of 
medical aid, and probably to find a grave in the sea ; while 
to escape to inland towns was to throw one's self into the 
arms of the pestilence, carried there by earlier fugitives. 
The numbers of the dead give but an imperfect idea of 
the wide-spread suffering and anguish. The disease is re- 
pulsive and treacherous, and requires the most unremit- 
ting and laborious attention. Its fatal ending is inexpres- 
sibly terrible, often attended with raving madness. Among 
the Creoles of the old French quarter, a smaller proportion 
thai! one in each eleven suffered attack. But in the Fourth 
District, where the nnacclimated were most numerous, 
there were whole wards where more than half the popula- 
tion had to take their chances of life and death from the 
dreadful contagion. In the little town of Algiers, just 
opposite the city, a thirty-sixth of all its people died in 
one week. 

On the 22d day of August, the climax was at last 
reached. Death struck that day, from midnight to mid- 
night, a fresh victim every five minutes, and two hundred 
and eighty-three deaths summed up an official record that 
was confessedly incomplete. The next day, there were 
twenty-five less. The next, thirty-six less than this. 
Each day was better than the preceding. The crisis had 



302 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

passed. Hope rose into rejoicing. The 1st of September 
showed but one hundred and nineteen deaths, and the 
10th but eighty. Korth winds and cool, dry weather set 
in. On the 20th, there were but forty-nine deaths ; on 
the 30th, only sixteen. In some of the inland towns it was 
still rao-ino;, and so continued until the middle of October. 

In the cemeteries of New Orleans, between the 1st of 
June and the 1st of Octobei-, nearly eleven thousand per- 
sons were buried. To these must be added the many 
buried without certificate, the hundreds who perished in 
their flight, and the multitudes who fell in the towns to 
which the pestilence was carried. It lingered through 
autumn, and disappeared only in December. During the 
year 1853 nearly thirty thousand residents of Xew Orleans 
were ill of the yellow fever, and there died, from all causes, 
nearly sixteen thousand. 

In the next two summers, 1854 and '55, the fever re- 
turned and destroyed more than five thousand persons. 
Cholera added seventeen hundred and fifty. The two 
years' death-rates were seventy-two and seventy-three per 
thousand. That of 1853 was one hundred and eleven. 
In three years, thirty-seven thousand people had died, and 
wherever, by ordinary rate of mortality, there should have 
been one grave or sepulchre, there were four. One can 
but draw a sigh of relief in the assurance that this is a 
history of the past, not the present, and that new condi- 
tions have made it next to impossible that it should ever 
be repeated in the future. 







XXXIX. 



BRIGHTER SKIES. 



" /~\TJT of this nettle, danger," says the great bard, "we 
^''^ phick this flower, safety." The dreadful scourge 
of 1853 roused the people of Xew Orleans, for the first 
time, to the necessity of knowing the proven truth con- 
cerning themselves and the city in which they dwelt. 

In the midst of the epidemic, the city council had ad- 
journed, and a number of its members had fled. But, in 
response to popular demand, a board of health had ap- 
pointed the foremost advocates of quarantine and muni- 
cipal cleansing a commission to study and report the mel- 



304 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

anc'lioly lessons of the plagne. Jt labored arduously for 
many months. At its head was that mayor of Xew Or- 
leans, Grossman by name, whose fame for wise and pro- 
tracted rule is still a pleasant tradition of the city, and 
whose characteristic phrase — " a great deal to be said on 
both sides " — remains the most frequent quotation on the 
lips of the common people to-day. Doctors Barton, Ax- 
son, McXeil, Symonds, and Kiddell, — men at the head of 
the medical profession, — completed the body. They were 
bold and faithful, and they effected a revolution. 

The thinking and unbiased few, M^ho in all communities 
nnist first receive and fructify the germ of truth, were 
convinced. The technical question of the fever's conta- 
giousness remained unsettled ; but its transportability was 
fearfully proven in a nniltitude of interior towns, and its 
alacrity in seeking foul quarters and its malignancy there 
were plainly shown by its history in the city. The commis- 
sion pronounced in favor of quarantine, and it was perma- 
nently established, and has ever since become, annually, 
more and more effective. They earnestly recommended, 
also, the purging of the city, and keeping it purged, by 
proper drainage and sewerage, of all those foul conditions 
that were daily poisoning its earth and air. The response 
to this was extremely feeble. 

It would seem as if the commercial value both of (quar- 
antine and cleanliness might have been seen by the mer- 
chant, since the aggregate value of exports, imports, and 
domestic receipts fell off twenty-two and a half millions, 



BRIGHTER SKIES. 305 

and did not entirely recover for three years. But it was 
not. The merchants, both Creole and American, saw only 
the momentary inconveniences and losses of quarantine 
and its defective beginnings ; the daily press, in bondage 
to the merchant through its advertising columns, carped 
and cavilled in two languages at the innovation and ex- 
panded on the filthiness of other cities, while the general 
public thought what they read. 

Yet, in the face of all set-backs, the city that once was 
almost annually scourged, has, in the twenty-seven years 
since the Great Epidemic, which virtually lasted till 1855, 
suffered but one mild and three severe epidemics. In 
1878, occurred the last of these, and the only severe one 
in fourteen years. Its fatality was but little over half as 
great as that of the Great Ej)idemic. In the five years 
ending with 1S55, the average annual mortality had been 
seventy. In the next five, it fell to forty-five. In the 
five of the secession and war period, it was forty. In the 
next, it was thirty-nine ; in the next, it sank to thirty-four 
and a half ; in that which closed in 1880, notwithstand- 
ing the terrible epidemic of 1878, the rate was but thirty- 
three and a half, and in the five years since that atfiiction 
it was under twenty- seven. 

The popular idea that a sudden revolution in the sani- 
tary affairs of the Creole city was effected by General B. F. 
Butler in 1SG2 is erroneous. It has just been shown that 
the city's health had already been greatly improved before 

the Civil War set in. "When General Butler assumed 
20 



308 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

control of its affairs there had been no epidemic of yellow 
fever for four years. The year of his domination was 
actually less healthy than the year before, its death-rate 
being thirty-six, against thirty-four for ISGl. In the sec- 
ond summer of Federal occupation the rate was an entire 
third larger than in the summer before the city fell. Ko 
five years since the close of the war, dividing the time off 
in regular periods of that length, has failed thus far to 
show a better mortality-rate than that five which ended 
with 1865 ; and in ten of the eighteen years immediately 
following that of Butler's notorious rule, the mortality has 
been lighter than it was that year. The mortality of 1879 
was under twenty-four, and that of 1880, twenty-six per 
thousand. 

The events of 1878 are fresh in the public mind. In 
Kew Orleans they overwhelmed the people at large with 
the convictions which 1853 had impressed upon the more 
thoughtful few. To the merchant, " shot-gun quarantines " 
throughout the Southern Mississippi Yalley explained 
themselves. The commercial necessity of quarantine and 
sanitation was established without a single scientific light, 
and measures were taken in hand for perfecting both — 
measures which are growing and bearing fruit day by day. 
They have already reduced the insalubrity of 'New Or- 
leans to a point where it may be compared, though timidly, 
with that of other great cities, and promise before long to 
make the city, really and emphatically, the home of health, 
comfort, and safetv. 



BRIGHTER SKIES. 307 

In the study of his expanded city, we have wandered 
from the contemplation of the Creole himself. It remains 
to be said that, nnquestionably, as his town has expanded 
and improved, so has he. As the improvements of the 
age draw the great world nearer and nearer to him, he 
becomes more and more open to cosmopolitan feeling. 
The hostility to Americans, as snch, is little felt. The 
French tongue is falling into comparative disuse, even in 
the family circle. The local boundaries are overstepped. 
He lives above Canal Street now without feeling exiled. 
The social circles blend into each other. Sometimes, with 
the old Gallic intrepidity of conviction, he moves ahead 
of the American in progressive thought. 

In these matters of sanitary reform, he has his share — 
or part of it. The old feeling of castellated immunity in 
his own high-fenced home often resents, in sentiment at 
least, official house-to-house inspection and the disturbance 
of a state of affairs under which his father and grandfather 
reached a good old age and left no end of children. Yet 
the movement in general has his assent ; sometimes his 
co-operation ; sometimes his subscription ; and his doctors 
take part in debates and experiments. He is in favor of 
all this healthful flushing ; this deepening and curbing of 
canals ; this gratuitous and universal distribution of cop- 
peras, etc. Against one feature only he wages open war. 
He laughs, but he is in earnest ; copperas, he tolerates ; 
lime, the same ; all odorless disinfectants, indeed ; but 
carbolic acid — no'! In Gallic fierceness, he hurls a nick- 



308 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

name at it — ^'■aclde dlahoUquc.'''' When he smells it, he 
loads his gun and points it through his shutters. You 
shall never sprinkle him with that stuff — never ! And 
who knows but he is nearest to the right ? 

On his sugar plantations, in the parishes named for the 
saints, he has grown broad and robust — a strong, manly 
figure in neat, spurred boots, a refined blood flushing 
through his bronzed but delicate skin, making him at 
times even florid. He is not so mortgaged as he used to 
be. Yankee neighbors have dropped in all about him 
lately, as they did in earlier days about his city cousins ; 
some from the eastern, some from the western Xorth — he 
calls them all by one generic term. But he likes them. 
They are preferable to " Cadians " — much. They stimu- 
late him. He is not so wedded to " open kettle " sugars 
as he once was. He is putting " vacuum pans " into his 
sugar-house — nay, did not the Creole, Valcour-Aime, in- 
troduce the vacuum pan into Louisiana ? — and studies chem- 
istry till he beats his breast in the M'holeness of his atten- 
tion. Yet he is full, too, of the questions of the day. The 
candor with which he grasps the new turn of affairs re- 
sulting from the Civil War is Avorthy of imitation by 
many an Anglo-American Southern community. He is apt 
to say he never did believe heartily in African slavery and 
now he knows it was a sad mistake. The cruel senti- 
ments of caste that sprang from it still survive, but they 
burn with no fierceness. They cannot easily perish, for 
they have been handed down through generations. They 



BRIGHTER SKIES. 



309 



are like those old ])ronze Argands, once so liiglily prized, 
still standing, rajless, on his mantelpiece ; lamps without 
oil. You may still see Congo Square, where the slave 
once danced his savage African songs in tattered half- 




The Old Calaboza. 



nakedness on Sabbath afternoons ; but the thunder of 
African drums rumbles there no more, and the Creole and 
the freedman are alike M'ell pleased that "the jig is up."' 
The Calaboza remains, but the irons that once burnt the 
flower-de-luce into the recaptured runaway's shoulder, and 



310 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

the four whipping-posts to which the recalcitrant slave 
was once made fast by hands and feet, are gone, and the 
Creole is glad of it. He is willing to be just to his former 
bondservant, now fellow-citizen, and where he holds the 
old unjust attitudes does so with little consciousness. The 
old Gallic intrepidity of thought comes to his aid, and is 
helping him out of the fiercely extreme conservatism en- 
gendered by an institutioh that could not afford to enter- 
tain suggestions of change. There is no other part of 
Louisiana where the slave has made so much progress, as a 
mass, toward the full possession of fi'eedom as he has in the 
*' sugar parishes." The colored man's history in the land of 
the Creoles we cannot write here. It would throw light upon 

our theme, but some other time. It is a theme by itself, 

too large to be hung upon this. Later, the Creole himself 
will be more prepared for it. Meantime he quotes the 
New York papers, and tells you frankly that he only wishes 
he could be rid of ISTorth Louisiana — where the " Ameri- 
can " planter reigns supreme — it is so behind the times. 

"When he is not so he is very different. In such case he 
bows his head to fate. Ilis fences are broken ; his levee 
is dangerous ; the plastering is falling in his parlor ; his 
garden has become a wild, damp grove, weed-grown and 
untrodden ; his sugar is dark, his thin linen coat is home- 
made ; he has transferred his hopes to rice and made his 
home sickly with irrigation ; he doesn't care who 3'ou are, 
and will not sell a foot of his land — no, not for price that 
man can name ! — till the red flag hangs out for him on 




An Inner Court — Royal Street. 



BKIGIITER SKIES. 313 

the courthouse square and the man with one drumstick 
drums him out of house and liome. 

Ill Xew Orleans, sad shrinkages in the vahie of down- 
town property have phiyed havoc with the old Creole 
rentier. Court officers and lawyers are full of after-dinner 
stories illustrating the pathetic romance of his fate. lie 
keeps at home, ou the front veranda. His wife and daugh- 
ter take in sewing and make orange marmalade and fig 
preserves on small private contracts. His son is a lounger 
in tlie court-rooms. The young man buttons his worn coat 
tightly about his small waist, walks Avith a Ijrisk aifectation 
of being pressed for time, stops you silently in Eoyal Street 
or Pore Antoine's Alley, on the stairAvay of the old Cabildo, 
to light his cigarette from your cigar — symbolic action, al- 
M'ays lighting his cigarette from somebody's cigar — gives 
you a silent, call -it-square sort of bow as full of grace as a 
Bourbon prince's, and hurries on, hoping soon to become 
fifth assistant to some deputy sheriff or public surveyor, 
or, if he have influential relatives, runner for a bank. He 
" plays the lottery," that curse of his town. 

"Well, of co'se,'' he says, blowing the tobacco smoke 
through his nose, " tliaz the way with evveybody, those 
time' — sinz ladely." Really he would ask you around to 
" The Gem," but — his poor, flat pocket ! nothing in it but 
his " memo'andum book," and not even a " memo'andum " 
in that. 

But he has kinsmen, in goodly number, M-ho blush for 
him ; he will tell you so with a strange mixture of pride 



314 



THE CKEOLES OF LOUISIANA. 



and humility ; and who are an honor and a comfort to their 
beloved city. They sit on the most important committees 
in the great Cotton Exchange, and in the Produce Ex- 




Old Spanish Gateway and Stair in the Cabildo. 



change, and in reform movements. They are cashiers 
and vice-presidents and presidents of street railway com- 
panies, of insurance companies, of banks. They stand in 
the front ranks at the bar. They gain fame and rever- 



BRIGHTER SKIES. 315 

eiice on tlio bench. They have held every office within 
the gift of the State. And they have been great beyond 
their own boundaries — out in tlie great world. A Louisi- 
ana Creole was once, for a short time, Minister of AVar in 
Prance, under the Du-ectoiy. Another sat in the Spanish 
Cortes. Another became a Spanish Lieutenant-General. 
Another was a general of patriot forces when the South 
American provinces threw off the yoke of Spain. Jean 
Jacques Audubon was a Creole of Louisiana. Louis Gotts- 
chalk was a Kew Orleans Creole. General Beauregard 
is a Creole of an old Creole line. 

They are iiot "dying out." Why should they ? " Doze 
climade sood dem " better than it suits any alien who has 
ever tried the drowsy superabundance of its summer sun- 
light, and they are becoming ever more and more worthy 
to survive. Their pride grows less fierce, their courage is 
no weaker for it, their courtesy is more cordial, they are 
more willing to understand and be understood, and their 
tastes for moral and intellectual refinements are o;rowino-. 

Even in their headlong gayeties — the spectacular pa- 
geants of the carnival — they have stricken hands with the 
" American," borrowed his largeness of pretension and the 
barbaric ambition of the South's retarded artistic impulse. 
The unorganized rout of masks peculiar to the old Latin 
cities has been turned into gorgeous, not to say gaudy, 
tableaux drawn through the streets under the glare of 
blazing petroleum and frequent lime-lights, on tinselled 
cars, by draped teams, to the blare of brass music and the 



316 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

roar of popular acclamation, in representation of one or 
another of the world's great nijths, epics, or episodes. 
Many thousands of people are drawn from contiguous or 
distant parts, with the approach of each Mardi-gras, to see 
— may the good town forgive the terra — these striding 
puerilities. Some come to gaze in wonder on these mira- 
cles in j?<2^2(?r-7?2<:c(7Ae^' and pi aster-of -Paris, and some, it is 
feared, to smile behind their hats at make-believe art, 
frivolous taste, and short-sighted outlay. The expenditure 
of time, money, and labor on these affairs is great — 
worthy of more lasting achievements. One Carnival day 
and night some years ago the crowds were more enormous 
than ever, the displays were gorgeous, the whole city was 
one wide revel. All through the hours of a glorious day 
the long, dazzling procession passed with their jeM'elled king 
sparkling in their midst, in street-full after street-full of 
multitudes that made the warm air quiver with acclama- 
tions. Kight fell, and Comus and his Ivrewe came forth 
in a blaze of torches and made everything seem tame that 
had gone before ; and when at midnight, M'ith the tinkle of 
a little bell, all disappeared, the people said that there had 
never been such a carnivaL But when the sun rose again 
they prayed there might never be just such another. For on 
his neglected couch, sought too tardily, the victim of over- 
fatigue, the royal Comus, lay dead. The "American," 
as well as the Creole, owns an undivided half of this folly, 
and the Creole, as well as the " xVmerican," is beginning 
to deprecate it. Already better aspirations are distinctly 



BRIGHTER SKIES. 317 

shown, and the city's efforts are reaching forth in many 
directions to adorn herself -with attractions that do not 
vanish at cockcrow, bnt, inviting the stranger to become a 
visitor, also tempt him to remain, a resident. 

"We have said that the air which the Creole breathes 
with nnvarying saitisfaction and exhales in praises of its 
superior merits is never very hot or very cold, by the mer- 
cury. Even in July and August the colunni lingers, for 
the most part, nnder 95°, and in mid-winter seldom sinks 
more than four or five degrees below the freezing-point. 
But since it is the evaporation from the surrounding 
swamps, marshes, and other shallow waters that makes this 
moderation, the effects upon the person are those of de- 
cidedly greater extremes of heat and cold. Yet the long and 
dazzlingly beautiful summers are generally salubrious, and 
it would be difficult to exaggerate the charms of the exu- 
berant spring which sets in before January is gone, and 
rises gently in fervor until May ushers in the summer. 
As to the summer, it goes, unwillingly, in November. 

Its languid airs have induced in the Creole's speech 
great softness of ntterance. The relaxed energies of a 
luxurious climate find publication, as it were, when he 
turns final Jc into g ; changes th, and t when not initial, to 
d ; final ^ to &, drops initial A, final le, and t after h ; 
often, also, the final d of past tenses ; omits or distorts his 
r, and makes a languorous z of all i's and soft c's except 
initials. On the other hand, the old Gallic alertness and 
wire-edffe still asserts itself in the confusing and inter- 



318 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

changing of long e and short i — sheep for ship, and ship 
for sheep — in the flattening of long i, as if it were coming 
through cane-crushers, in the prolonging of long a, the 
intrusion of uncalled-for initial A's, and the shortening and 
narrowing of nearly all long and broad vowels. 

The African slave in Louisiana — or, it may be more 
correct to say, in St. Domingo, before coming to Louisi- 
ana — corrupted the French tongue as grossly, or even 
more so, than he did the English in the rice plantations of 
South Carolina. No knowledge of scholarly French is a 
guarantee that the stranger will understand the " Creole " 
negro's gortibo. To the Creole scmg jyur this dialect is an 
inexhaustible fountain of amusement. In the rural par- 
ishes the hai'sh archaisms of the Acadian perform the 
same office and divide the Creole's attention. But in " the 
City " they Acadian dialect is hardl/known, and for a cen- 
tury or more the melodious drollery and grotesqueness of 
the negro j?«^c>i-s has made it the favorite vehicle of humor- 
ous song and satirical prose and verse.' 

' In Le Carillon, " Journal Hebdomadaire, organe des popnlatious 
Franco-Louisiauaises, Bureaux, 125 Rue Royale," appeared in 1874 a 
series of witty political lampoons, from one of wliicli a few lines may be 
drawn by way of illustration. 
Miche Carillon, 

Y a queques jours mo te apo fouille mo champ pistaches, et vous va 
connin, y a rien-comme fouille pistaches jiour gagnin zidees. Et jour- 
la mo te plein zidees. Mo te lire bo matin la que nous te ape couri 
gagnin eine nouvelle election, et mo coeur te batte si fort a nouvelle-la 
que mo te bo Man Cribiche quatre fois et Man Magritte trois fois, en 



BRIGHTER SKIES. 319 

It would make a long chapter to untangle its confused 
mass of abbreviations, suppressions of inflections, liasons, 
nazalizations, omissions, inversions, startling redundancies, 
and original idioms. The Creole does not tolerate its use 
in polite conversation, and he is probably seldom aware 
that his English sparkles and crackles with the same 
pretty corruptions. For example, or as the Creole himself 
would say, " faw egzamp," let us take the liberty of in- 
venting a sentence and setting it in his lips : 

" I am going to do my utmost to take my uncle there, 
but he is slightly paralyzed and I do not think he will feel 
like going." He would say — 

" I goin' do my possib' fedge ma hunc' yond', bud, 
'owevva, 'e's a lit' bit ^Q^olyse an' I thing 'e don' goin' fill 
llgueP 

Examples need not be multiplied. One innocent asser- 
tion that found its way to a page of the present writer's 
scanty notes from the lips of a Creole country physician 
will stand for a hundred. The doctor, like many of his 
race, would have known at once that the foregoing illustra- 
tion was bad English ; but he is not aware, to this day, 
that there was any inaccuracy in his own simple assertion : 

m'ecriant : "Oh.! mes femmes ! mes epouses ! vous va zetes bientot 
petete Lietnantes-Goiaverneuses. " 

**** * *** 

Jour-la, y6 te oule fait saute Mechanic's avec tous so mecaniques, ye te 
pas capabe connin oCi Antouene te passe, ye trouve li, lendemain matiu, 
li te attache apres so maillet et li te ape dit : "0 reine Voudoux, sauvez 
le Lietnant-Gouvernair,— " etc. 



320 THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. 

" I've jiiz been pulling some teeth to yonr neighbor." 
There ai'e reasons — who can deny it ? — why we should 
be glad that the schoolmaster is abroad in Louisiana, 
teaching English. But the danger is, that somewhere in 
the future lurks a day M'hen the Creole will leave these 
loveable drolleries behind him, and speak our tongue with 
the same dull correctness with which it is delivered in the 
British House of Lords. May he live long, and that time 
be very, very far away ! 



THE END. 



IK , 



I 



